Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Sean Steele: G’day everyone and welcome to the ScaleUps Podcast where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling so they can fulfill the potential of their businesses, make bigger decisions with greater confidence, and maximise the value and impact they can have in the world. I am your host Sean Steele, and my guest today is Rosie Yeo. Do I pronounce it Yeo, Rosie? Have I got that right? Okay. Founder of Bold Strategy. How are you today? It's so good to have you.
‍

[00:00:25] Rosie Yeo: Yeah, Sean, lovely to be with you too. Really well.
‍

[00:00:28] Sean Steele: Well, we were introduced by Sophie Scott not long ago whom I recently interviewed on the podcast about how to reduce the risk of burnout for Founders, especially as we sort of get to the end of the year. We're just talking about this offline, you know, people are pretty busy trying to ram things home. And on episode 55, we talked a bit about how to sort of prevent burnout for Founders. But what, in my conversation with Sophie, I really wanted to see if she knew anyone around strategy, and I was super excited that she introduced me to you because, and I'm really excited to be talking to somebody else who spends a lot of their time talking to clients about strategy. Takes me off the island and gives me someone to chat with because I think, you know, you and I, probably also work in slightly different spaces. You tend to work probably a bit more with the larger organisations, boards, executive teams, and certainly business leaders. And I probably tend to work in the 2 to 20 mil range, far more. So, I'm probably working a bit more with the smaller end of town in terms of revenue. And I know that some of the listeners will probably think, well, this is a bit weird. Why is Sean who spends all this time talking to us about strategy got somebody else who also spends time on strategy? And I was thinking, well, why wouldn't you do that? I mean, no one has all the answers, and I'm sure you like me. I don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that I'm the person who's got all of the answers or the only perspective that's of value. So, I was really keen for us to get together today and explore your philosophies, and approaches, and a bit of a creative exchange because I'm sure we're going to be able to give Founders who are listening, something to really think about in the context of if they want to make the next three to five years count for them, they're going to be busy doing stuff anyway. Right? Why not try to set themselves up for success with the best of both of our thinking? How does that sound to you?
‍
‍

[00:02:10] Rosie Yeo: Sounds fantastic, Sean. And you're right. I mean, the first thing all of us need to bring into talking about strategy is curiosity. As soon as you have everybody walking into the room thinking they know it all and thinking that they're the experts walking into the room, that's the time when you don't come up with any new ideas, because you're just stuck with what people know already. So, I love the opportunity to speak with people who have different perspectives and also find where the similarities are, as well.
‍
‍

[00:02:36] Sean Steele: That's right. And you know, one of the things, something that you just said there just made me think about the fact that, sometimes people, when they're getting help or getting sort of outside support, often ask the question things like, but that person doesn't come from our industry, so how are they going to help us develop strategy or provide guidance or advice? And I always think, how many years of experience of sitting in this room with industry experience, it's usually somewhere between like 80 and 150. And I'm thinking, do you need more industry experience? Like, really? What do you need? Somebody who's going to ask you some harder questions and some deeper questions to think about to perhaps take you outside industry, and to maybe think a little bit more differently. And I know that from a background perspective, you've helped thousands of, both individuals and businesses really reimagine their futures through a simple approach to strategy and to setting boulder long-term plans and mapping the pathways to help them get there. And that's either been; correct me if I'm wrong, but either directly facilitating or consulting to them. Be that, boards, executive teams, owners, et cetera, or them, I guess, applying your principles themselves, having read your book - Go for Bold, how to create powerful strategy in uncertain times. One of the things I was interested in up front, Rosie, was that you've come out of a sort of public affairs strategy background, which is a really interesting way to be transitioning into the strategy work that you do and you do strategic planning, but you also do policy facilitation as well as leadership development. How did your work in Political Advisory originally and public affairs influenced how you actually think about the development of strategy?
‍

[00:04:12] Rosie Yeo: Well, I think my early work in politics, whatever you think of politics, the most interesting thing about politics is that the first thing you learn is that you absolutely need to take a really wide view. So, if someone's coming up with a policy idea or something that, you know, some change they want to make, you've got to be really clear what every single stakeholder and every single organisation thinks about that idea, how they're going to respond, how it'll impact on them. Because otherwise, you're sort of making decisions in an echo chamber and you're not really appreciating what the impact will be. So, just taking that wide view, that wide perspective, is probably the most important thing I took away from politics. I mean, I think the Salutatory lesson I also took was that, you know, the more you're taking the tendency sometimes in politics is to take very short-term perspectives. So, you know, people make decisions based on what the impact's going to be at the next federal election or the next state election or whatever it might be. But of course, particularly when you're designing public policy, you're putting big amounts of money, big structural change into things that are going to have an impact long after current crops of politicians are being around. So, finding the politicians and the leaders in bureaucracies who are absolutely willing to take that long-term perspective and make those best decisions based on that long-term view. It didn't always happen, but when it does happen, it's really powerful.
‍

[00:05:37] Sean Steele: Well, that's a very interesting, I mean, geez, that's a huge topic that we probably should be careful about how we dive into around the Australian political system and how much it incentivises long-term thinking for our political leaders. But it's not that different in business really, is it? Because, you know, particularly if a CEO or a leadership team have got, they always have short term results pressures. So, whether they're publicly listed, and they've got external shareholders and lots of transparency or whether they are just super motivated in terms of their own profitability or their own impact, and they can get very attached to short-term results. And you know, I think one of the words that you used was sort of, business planning versus longer-term strategic thinking. It's very easy to do business planning. Everybody can see the priorities in their own mind for the next 6 to 12 months, what should I focus on? Well, there's a million things you could focus on. You can probably prioritise it pretty easily, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to lead you somewhere. How do you think about that? If you think about smaller businesses that perhaps wonder, strategy all sounds great, but it sounds a bit lofty to me. Like, do I really need to be thinking about sort of strategy? Like, my world moves too fast, I have to adapt and change every five seconds. Should I be spending time on strategy? What do you think about that?
‍

[00:06:49] Rosie Yeo: Yeah. Well, the short answer is yes. The longer, yes, you should, absolutely. It doesn't matter what the scars or scale of your business, you should absolutely be clear about what your long-term strategy is. But there's a few reasons for that. I mean, I think the first thing to say is that all of us, particularly people who run their own business. You know, of course we're opportunistic. You know, you see opportunities, you want to grab them. You see a new avenue opening up, you want to make the most of it. That's part of being entrepreneurial, which is fantastic. But if you want to build a business or an organisation and succeed over the long-term, you really need to view the world through two distinct lenses. So, the first lens is that long-term ambition, you know, what do you want to achieve in the next… what do you want to create by the next 5 years, 10 years? How do you want to change the world? Or your little part of it? And part of the reason why we do need that long-term ambition, no matter what the scale of your business is that, just by giving yourself the gift of time by looking further ahead, you actually give yourself permission to raise your ambition too. When we're looking further ahead, we can sort of open our minds up to more possibilities and we can get excited about all the options. We're not kind of constrained by the here and now, what's right in front of us. But of course, we're also dealing with a lot in our immediate focus. So, the second lens is about how do we make, you know, once we got clarity about where we're really trying to land long-term, then it's much easier to take a short-term focus as well, um, and sort of juggle all the opportunities and things we need to do in the now.
‍
‍
But you keep that eye on what does that mean for the future as well. It's a bit like I really like going down hiking, and a while back, a few months back, I went hiking with some friends in the Flinder's Rangers, actually amazing, beautiful part of the world down in South Australia. And on one of the days when you're hiking, you're heading to this big mountain and you know, we bush back, we went with the guard and we were bush bashing quite a lot of part of the way. And you know, that ultimately you're heading for this big mountain that's going to have a spectacular view on it. But one of the days in particular, most of the days we were just walking through these dry creek beds. So, you're stumbling over loose rocks and it's really beautiful. But after a few hours, people started to get a bit fed up with it. Like, when are we going to get out of this riverbed? And you actually forget. There's a mountain just over the side, and if you only focused on exactly the rocks, you're stumbling over right now, you lose sight of where you could go. And of course, the guide all of a sudden goes, okay, out of the riverbed we're heading over there. He knew an entirely different route to get up to the mountain, because he'd been that way before and he knew exactly, and he kept that focus on where we were heading. So, I do think all of us need to just keep those juggle, those two lenses all the time, and that long-term perspective helps you make much better decisions in the moment.

‍

[00:09:42] Sean Steele: That's really interesting that you say that because it reminds me of a conversation that I had only a couple of days ago. I was helping to facilitate a session. I'm an advisory board chair, and a fellow at the advisory board centre, which is like a peak body for advisory board professionals. And we were running a training session for new advisory board chairs. And one of the things that I was sharing a story around was, why sometimes owners really like starting to formalise their support structures around things like advisory boards, because it starts to elevate them out. They might be quite good at, if you were to say; Hey, can you give some kind of an update, a monthly report on your business? Great. They'll probably give you a whole bunch of operational metrics and they'll help give you a whole bunch of financial mix. They'll give you P&L, they'll give you some analysis. They'll tell you what's going on. They'll tell you about what's right now. But what most of them don't have is because they don't usually have a strategy in place and they have not thought about what are the leading and lagging indicators that might attach to say, key initiatives. You know, big bets, like a couple of key things that are really going to shift the dial in helping them move between where they are now, and where they want to get to, so they're not just doing that urgent stuff, they're actually creating space for some of those important things that may not be quick payoff, but might be long-term, really starting to shift and change the business model so it becomes more competitive, or it becomes, uh, more able to deliver longer term impact, not just short-term results. And all of a sudden there's almost like a third page to the report, which is the sort of strategy KPIs like. What are the things we need to be looking at that are going to tell us whether we're changing the future dial, even if it's not changing the dial immediately right now. And so I really like that context around the rocks and the piece, because it's very easy to get lost in the stuff that's right now, that's a never ending, you know, miasma of things that are urgent and often, sometimes important, but the non-urgent important stuff often goes by the wayside unless you've got that strategy and that vision to anchor you to actually what you need to be working on for the future. Rosie, you know, you could have taken your career in a lot of directions, why do you like working with boards and leaders on strategy? What lights you up about it?
‍
‍

[00:11:52] Rosie Yeo: Okay, so there's probably two things that I love about my work. There's actually lots of things I love about my work, let's be honest. I mean, the first thing is, it's an absolute privilege to be in the room with people who are very smart, very passionate, very committed to what it is they want to achieve. And to be able to do that, like to be in a room with a corporate board one day, and then a government organisation working with stakeholder organisations the next day. And then a smaller non-profit organisation trying to figure their way through the ups and downs of Covid. Like, it's such a privilege to be there when the big decisions are made and the really important conversations are held. So, every time I'm in the room with a group, I learn about different approaches to strategy and different ways of planning for the future. I think, I mean really the reason why I started in facilitation was because I had worked in politics, I'd run public affairs for an industry association and I was actually on a national regulatory board, you know, so I was doing director roles as well. And I have to confess, I hated going to strategy meetings. I walked in, you know, you almost had to kind of push me into the room because I found them frustrating and time consuming. And it seemed like people were so busy discussing definitions. Like, no, you're talking about a goal. No, we've got to focus what does that mean for an objective. You know, are we talking about the vision or the mission? There was all this time talking around the framework, and not enough time having the really important conversations about what was most important. So, I thought there actually has to be a better way. I know these things are important, there's got to be a better way. So, I did some training on facilitation. I'd done my MBA and so, I tested out some of my ideas when I was working with some of my government relations clients, you know, when we needed to have a strategy session with the marketing department and the R&D and the Sales and everybody else about a particular, you know, when I was working for a consulting to a food company, things like that. And then organisations, my clients started saying to me, oh, you did that. You facilitated that session really well. I know you've got an MBA, can you just do our whole strategy now? I was like, sure, I'll give it a whirl. So, you know, I literally learned on the job after doing initial training in facilitation. And so, literally every time I walk out of a room and having done a strategy process with an organisation, it's a fantastic time to go back and reflect and think about how can we make these conversations better? How can we ensure that genuine agreement is reached? How do we make those decisions about what's being bold enough for this organisation? What does bold look like for this organisation and how are you going to go out and deliver it?
‍
‍

[00:14:31] Sean Steele: That's a really interesting context too, because strategies that lack boldness are actually just longer-term business plans, aren't they? Like its business planning with a few years added as opposed to actually something that people go, huh, imagine if we could do that. Like, you know, I always think about this cognitive dissonance that sort of needs to be felt, like this tension between, like you should look at that strategy piece and go; I may not have all, I probably don't have all the answers as to how we're actually going to do that, and I don't need to know all of the answers, and it should actually make me feel a little bit uncomfortable. If it's not making me feel uncomfortable at all. It's probably not big enough. If there's no tension in there, but that's actually the stuff that uplifts people because if they can see line of sight and go, oh yeah, we can do that, that's just easy to execute. That's probably just business planning. You probably really haven't elevated the conversation just yet.
‍
‍

[00:15:23] Rosie Yeo: And speaking of elevating a conversation, it's an interesting question to think about, should your business plan or your strategy be the larger document and I would actually propose that your business plan is fantastic. It's got a lot of detail, it's got a lot of numbers, got a lot of things. But if you can't capture your strategy, your overall strategy in a very short document. Then it's probably not a strategy, it's probably because it's not clear enough. I remember, I think it was Crystal from Bane and Co has written, done a lot of work on the secrets to long-term success of organisations; large and small, and even for the larger organisations, one of his key findings was that long-term success is absolutely linked to simplicity. You know, like if you're clear about that over all, those core elements of your strategy and what your ultimate purpose is, that's a secret to long-term success. So, you know, I love that idea of just making sure, you know, can you explain your strategy in the framework of a fairy tale takes one page. You know, once upon a time there was a thing and you know, these are the things we need to overcome. This is where we tried to get to, this is how we're going to do it. It's a really easy and simple way of testing how clear people. Strategy. Anyway, I digress. Sorry.

‍

[00:16:41] Sean Steele: No, no, I think it's a super important point. You know, that the output of every strategy, bit of strategy work that I do with clients is, it's captured in two documents. One, which is a single page desktop background image that every team member can put on their computers or that you can install on their computers or whatever the IT framework is. And so, it should be able to articulate that entire story. You know, who we are, where we're going, how we're going to get there, what success looks like. That's all captured in one desktop background image. So actually, then your ability to explain it to people is super easy because you can refer to it all the time. It's very easy. It's always present for them. And then I also give them a PowerPoint version just in case they need to sort of chop it up into different other forums like they might be having town halls or whatever. But one of the last things I do with Founders when we're finish the process is we talk about, which I really learned from Jamie Christofferson, who I had on the podcast a while back, who does a lot of work on strategy and strategy to execution. Like really gets deep into the supporting the execution of the strategy was, how is it articulated to people? How are you telling that story? Getting people actually to practice, if the simplicity's not there, they can't turn it into their own words and they're trying to remember something that's wrote and, you know, long and they're trying to remember all the points as opposed to being able to actually to embody what the whole driver of this thing is, what it's all about, and then be able to bring their own language into it and explain it to people, both to their own teams, but also to their customers. And because I love it, he made this challenge which I thought was beautiful. He said, well, I said, how many people would want to share their strategy with their customers? And he said, well, if you can't share it with your customers, how customer focused is it? And I thought, that’s such a great question. Now, not every strategy's going to be entirely customer focused, but if the core of that strategy is not creating more value for those customers, then what's going on with the strategy? I really loved that context, but that simplicity is what give you the …

‍

[00:18:38] Rosie Yeo: That's fantastic. It's so powerful and actually as you're talking about conversations with customers, I think the other thing that we've picked up during Covid is that you can have some really interesting strategy conversations with suppliers as well. So, I do a lot of work in the business events space and you know, they were absolutely hammer when everything shut down. But I saw some really interesting conversations happening between, well actually competitors, but also between providers and suppliers of how they could work best to solve some of these problems and provide alternatives. And I think it made us realise that the more you actually are able to, of course you don't want to share every element of your strategy with every single person that walks through the door, but getting a better understanding of some of your key suppliers, their strategies moving ahead, sometimes you can find some really interesting opportunities to help both of you get further along the road as well. So, it's worth thinking about those trusted partners wherever they are along the value chain.

[00:19:35] Sean Steele: Absolutely. Well, you're both, you're interdependent, right? Like their success relies on you as yours does on them. So, what do you think then, are some of the characteristics of good strategy, Rosie? How do you think about that?

‍

[00:19:47] Rosie Yeo: So, I think a good strategy is having three key things. First of all, at its core, there's a great idea. You're really clear about how you're going to differentiate yourself, how you're going to achieve long-term competitive advantage, whether that's in what you produce or provide, or whether it's in how you do it. But there's got to be that core element, that certainty of what it is at your core that's really special for you. And then the second thing is there needs to be a clear pathway. You know, how will you overcome the hurdles and maximise the enablers to bring that great idea to life? And that third element, there needs to be a far horizon. So, you do need to have that sense of ambition that's shared with everybody in your team so that everybody understands and signs up to what that long-term vision of success is. I would say those three things are absolutely cool.

‍

[00:20:38] Sean Steele: I love that, Rosie, because one of the things that you and I talked about in our exchange before we got on the call was, and you said right up front what you and I are going to have some similarities and some differences. And so, I thought; Geez, Rosie's probably going to turn this question back on me, so I should probably think about what my answer is as well. And the first three things I wrote, I wrote about four or five questions. Like these are the questions that I'm asking myself at the end, and asking my Founders, is it going to move us materially closer to fulfilling our purpose, our potential, and in line with our value? So that's your long-term, you know, part of that long term orientation. Second, does it adequately connect the A to C - A is now, and C is the direction, does it adequately connect it considering the environment we're operating in? So, to your point, does it kind of make logical sense as a pathway? And third, does it make us a more competitive business, not just a bigger one? So your point about that, the uniqueness in the specialness and will it actually build a competitive advantage, is really key to me. And then I have two more questions that I'm asking. One that I stole from Jamie, which was, this three Gods test that he came up with, which I really loved, that he was sort of inspired by these three Hindu gods. And it's around the concept of renewal and that good strategy fundamentally has three ingredients as part of it, has the stuff that's new and that's sort of new coming out to the ground, the seeds, et cetera. The stuff that actually is really important from where we've been and that needs to be maintained and nourished and continue to grow, and the stuff that we need to let go of to create space for the other two.
‍
‍

[00:22:12] And I really liked that balance. Then the final one was, is it something that our customers, and I think I'll now add suppliers to that, you know, is it something that our customers and suppliers would support because they think they're actually going to receive value from that and therefore can engage in it and therefore it's sufficiently value creating for the network as opposed to just value creating for me, as the Founder. So, yeah, geez, we're very aligned on them. That's wonderful.
‍
‍

[00:22:38] Rosie Yeo: Yeah.

‍

[00:22:39] Sean Steele: Any examples that you think of, companies that you consider as a benchmark or, you know, could be clients that you've noticed just had something really special about the way that they put together their strategy and what might we take from that?

‍

[00:22:54] Rosie Yeo: Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? You know what I'm… Let me start with one little example. It's a tiny little start up in Sydney. A couple of people started this off. They're really great software developers, so they established a company to create software collaboration tools to help software developers collaborate with other software developers. So, it's like Geek Central. So, a couple of guys started off a small startup in Sydney, but right from the start, they knew that they wanted to go global. So, they had these big ambitions. So, what do you do? You're in a small startup in Sydney, pretty much the base of the earth. You have no money, and yet you have this global ambition. So, of course what they did was they asked a big and imaginative question; what if we threw out the rule book on corporate software sales? So, back when they started to sell software to corporates, you have a big sales team. You go in, you talk to the corporate managers, and you price it at premium corporate pricing. They're like; Nope, we're going to throw out the rule book. So, they didn't even have a sales team. They provided their software for virtually free. They virtually gave it away because they wanted the tech developers themselves to try it, love it, and recommended to their teams. Now that tiny little start up in Sydney was of course, Atlassian 20 years ago, which is now of course a 50 billion gorilla on the US Stock Exchange. But they started, they were a start-up and they just asked that imaginative question about, we know we've got a great product, but how do we do it differently? How do we give access to it and give scale to it differently? So that's, I think that's a fantastic and inspirational example for all of us about just asking that “what if” question as part of your strategy is so valuable. But I did want to mention one other too. A wonderful woman I've done some work with, wonderful organisation, Suzanne Hotman, who's actually the, she started Dignity, which is a non-profit organisation. And Suzanne started it because she was working in social services in Sydney again, and she saw women and children escaping domestic violence, being like stuck in dingy, unsafe hotel rooms with no path forward because there was no long-term housing. So, she decided to establish a non-profit organisation called Dignity, and that they had a really clear vision. Their goal was to end homelessness. One person at a time. So that was a long-term ambition, but how do you do that? We all know how many how complex the issues are. So, her core strategy was that they were going to completely transform the time it took for people who were at risk of homelessness to find secure long-term accommodation. And their roadmap ensured that the people who worked with Dignity, their clients managed to find secure housing, not years or months after they sought, but just two weeks was their average time. And of course, once you find secure housing, everything else falls into place. It's much easier to get healthcare. It's much easier to get the kids back to school, to find work. So, just by transforming that one part of the process, she's transformed, I think it's like 150,000 people, Dignity has now helped start that journey out of homelessness. And it just started with that really bold ambition for change, but also a very clear focus on what the difference was with how they were going to achieve it.
‍

[00:26:22] Sean Steele: I love that. What a great example. And you know, to your point, that's such a…One of the things that says to me is that she had such an incredibly deep understanding of the problem, like, you know, that's almost like there's one part in this whole thing that the way that everybody's attacking it that's just stuck or that needs to be sort of slightly shifted, which can really unlock a lot of value. One of the examples that I really like in terms of strategy is actually an organisation that I'm an advisor too, which is the advisory board centre. So, they've got their own advisory board, so they, you know, sort of, they walk their own talk. I'm not the chair of that advisory board, but I'm one of the advisors on the advisory board. It's a small full purpose company, but it established itself. And the reason for the strategy for me is about understanding your category and who you're going to be in that category. So not just seeing a category or a bit of white space and thinking, oh yeah, I can compete there. But what these guys did was, you know, probably 10 years ago they noticed that there was all this, actually Louise, the Founder, had had an advisory board herself and it had helped her exit her last business. And it was really instrumental in helping her think differently and be challenged as a Founder in terms of how she built this business. Anyway, had a great experience. Looked around and went, there's regulation, but there's also standards and peak bodies for company directors. And then you've got all these consultants and you know, individual advisors and stuff down the bottom. But no one's professionalising the advisory sector. And they looked at this, they sort of saw advisory boards were really fast growing. They were proliferating all around the world. And they thought, but no one's actually playing a market making kind of role here. Like, where are the people who are actually setting up the standards? And option one would've been, advisory boards are a big growth opportunity. Let's do advisory boards and let's build a kick ass advisory boards type business. But what they decided to do was actually to go into establishing a peak body and set the standards. So, they're building the frameworks, the ethical, the best practices, they are certifying people to our quality level so that there's brand reputation being built in the advisory board sector for people who've got their certifications and qualifications. But what I liked about this is that, they actually have a hundred year plan. They're building the business in such a way that it's enduring and it will sort of proliferate on its own through a kind of network effect globally, they're already in 20 countries. They're only about four, probably five years old. They're now in 20 countries. They're really making fast headway and it's because they've elevated the conversation, and they've chosen to be a sort of market maker rather than a competitor in the market to let everybody else deal with that. But it really came down to like one small question, like who do we want to be in this category? Do we want to be in with everybody else and just trying to outcompete or do we actually want to set the market and sort of almost design it? And I thought that was a really interesting upfront question, which has driven some really incredible outcomes for I think, you know, in terms of creating value for Founders who now got access to people who undertake best practice methods and so on. Pretty cool model.

‍

[00:29:23] Rosie Yeo: That's great. And you know those questions, you know, asking the right questions and taking the time to think about all the possible answers. This all takes time. And I think that's one of the things people kind of back away from strategy, partly because some of them just find it tedious and boring, which I totally don't accept if it's done well. But, you know, I do think that people kind of consider it a bit of a luxury, like, yeah, we're going to go on the offsite and going to, you know, it's not a luxury, it's a necessity. Like if you don't give yourself the time, not just to get your data together, but to allow yourself that imagination and the opportunity to wonder and just ask a range of questions and consider things from a few different perspectives, you're not giving yourself the best chance of success

‍

[00:30:08] Sean Steele: Yeah, as we said up front, if you think about the next… the next three years are going to happen anyway. Like, you're going to be doing stuff, you'll be super busy, no question. Like, stuff's going to happen. You'll be creating things, you'll get results, like something will happen. So, it's not a question of like, oh, what am I going to do if I don't have a strategy? But it's quite the question. How impactful is that three years, or five years of work going to be? Like, where is it going to be leading to? Will you actually have a materially different, stronger, more competitive business that's better able to fulfill your potential and your impact or will you just be bigger? Because if you're just bigger, I think that's a bit of a missed opportunity if you've got a business that really can create value in the world, and I think it's a sort of lost opportunity. Speaking of the questions, Rosie, do you have a framework, steps that you use that you could share a bit with the audience?

‍

[00:30:58] Rosie Yeo: Yeah, absolutely. So, the first thing I'd say is that the quality of the conversation we have about strategy is way more important than which framework you use. There's a hundred different frameworks that you can use if you want, for strategy. I tend to start with my clients trying to figure out with them what are the big questions they need to answer. So, when we talked earlier, Sean, about the fact that every strategy answers some core questions and sometimes I work through these with clients. You know, who are we, where are we now, and where are we? Where do we want to get to, and why does that matter? And then, how are we going to get there? What are the hurdles? What are the enablers and what are the best strategies to move forward and achieve it? How will we know when we've got there? But sometimes organizations don't need that full strategy, the full sort of process all the way through. Sometimes they may have already set the strategy a year ago. But they've come up against sort of two big questions. So, kind of narrowing it down, not just doing the same framework every year, I think is helpful for organisations to think a bit more clearly at the start about, no, what are the questions we need to answer for ourselves in our long-term this time? Not just what are the ones, you know, sometimes you need to test and change, but sometimes you need to narrow in a bit on some of the big questions. But I find that helpful. So, I do frame every session with a client slightly differently, but I do of course have a very handy five step process, which includes those big questions that we talked about. Happy to provide for the show notes or mention that on my website. You know, there's a free download of that framework at Rosieyeo.com.au/resource. So, yeah, but I do think, I mean, I'm sure you find the same thing. You know, the frameworks are helpful, but they're not the be all and end all. It's giving people the space, the time, and the trust to be able to ask some crazy questions.

‍

[00:32:52] Sean Steele: I think that's really important. It's an important context. You know, space that we're creating for people to have these conversations is super important. If they don't feel like they can be, if everyone in the room doesn't feel like they can actually be vulnerable and come up with some crazy ideas, you're going to get business planning. You're going to get logical, sequential. Yep, we've done this, and the next natural step is that, and then the next natural step is that, and you're like, that's not where you may, you may go through a really creative exercise and actually come back to what you're already thinking. If that's the case, great. If the quality of the questions were good and a challenge you're thinking, if you come back to the same thing, fine. If that's the best strategy for your business, there's no default sort of best way of doing anything. But to your point, it's about what's the quality of the conversation. And you know, to your point around how our similarities and differences, a lot of my Founders have similar, I tend to attract people who are very growth-focused and who are in that 2 mil to 20 mil range. And so, I think there's probably some commonalities that, to your point, that you'd find it in many strategic planning frameworks, you know, you're going to be designing your future, you're going to be looking at the external environment, like kind of the conditions that we're going to be operating in. You're going to be coming up with some kind of really key pieces that you're probably going to double down on. You're going to have some kind of an execution plan and maybe a financial plan that goes with it. What I've done in my process that I tend to do with Founders that is unique for them, you know, designed for that kind of market. Is also to really dig into sort of picking up the business model itself and the positioning of the business and actually almost holding it under the microscope and optimising it as we go. Because most of my Founders are designing strategy because they want to maximise valuation and exit options for them over the course of that period. So, we're therefore looking at all the elements of scalability. We're looking at their commercial model. We're looking at do they have recurring revenue streams? Do they have sticky, sort of switching costs for customers? Do they have the right cash conversion cycle? We're kind of looking at all these pieces that help them optimise the business as they go. So, they're setting up a path in the context of where they want to get to and the environment. But we're also trying to pick up and refine the business in the process of doing strategy, which unfortunately means it takes a little bit longer. And so, you know, a lot of clients will go; Hey, that's great. Can we do like a strategy day? I'm like, mm, I don't really do strategy day. Sorry, I know I'm probably annoying because it's going to take a bit longer than that, but it's the robustness to your point of the conversation, the ability to step back and really ask some hard questions of them and of yourself to see so that whatever the simplicity is that comes out the other side, it's been informed by good quality thinking.

‍

[00:35:35] Rosie Yeo: And that actually what you've said there spikes me to when I'm thinking about going to a strategy day and turning up to a strategy day, I would also say that strategy is not done in one day. You know, you embed these conversation, I mean, of course you have your offsites and it's really important to take that time. But embedding those conversations throughout the organization is really important. And I think the other reason why we need strategy processes, particularly with entrepreneurial Founders, is that sometimes, you know, some people's brains work so fast. They're so strategic, they're so imaginative, they can kind of take two leaps forward while everyone else is trying to catch up, and you actually need to walk through the process with everyone in the room so that you're bringing the rest of the team with you, because otherwise you can run the risk that someone's way out in front. But the people who are actually going to need to deliver it, they haven't quite got there yet, and they haven't been given the time and space to get there and to understand the steps between, if you like. And that's how you get, you know, I sometimes talk about it as being strategy alchemy. So, there's this magic that happens when you blend three things. So, you need your information, your data, or an analysis, but you need to blend that with imagination. So being more creative and thinking, asking some creative questions. But then that shared ambition that everybody sort of understands and signs up to, and if you had the time and space to get all of those three things blended together, that's when you get a really powerful strategy.

‍

[00:37:05] Sean Steele: Well, because when you think about it, I love that third piece around the shared ambition because you can come up with any strategy you like as a Founder, but the question is who's going to be implementing it? And if you can't sort of have your team embody that because they understand it or they feel like they've been part of it in some way. And they may not, that doesn't mean they're all sitting in the room like, okay, if you've got 200 people in your business, you don't have all 200 people sitting there in a workshop. But if you can't bring them on that journey. And I used to get caught out by this. I used to get pulled back by Nicola, my group people and performance leader. She was awesome at going; Hey Sean, I know you are like three steps over here, but actually we haven't taken this group of people on that journey yet, so we need to come back and go through that process with them. So, I used to get caught on that plenty in sort of executive roles, but getting those people on board and having them really embody it and understand it, it's critical because they're the ones who are actually out there implementing it. And if they don't get it, they also can't evolve it and they can't give feedback on it because they don't understand the drivers as to why or whether maybe some of the assumptions that we made are not actually playing out that way. And there's what they're seeing in the market or seeing with customers suggest that maybe we were ill informed or that the landscape's changing and we need to know about it. If they don't get why it was in the first place. They can't give you feedback as to where it needs to be changing or where it might need to tweak or some modification, either.

‍

[00:38:24] Rosie Yeo: And they can't make decisions in the moment. You know, like all the day-to-day stuff. Those decisions are not going to be made with that long term view in in sight because they don't really understand it and they haven't signed up to it. Even in a small organisation, I do think that.

‍

[00:38:39] Sean Steele: Yeah, no, sorry to cut you off there. I agree with you. A couple of last questions. Boards versus executive teams. I meet a lot of directors, lots of non-executive directors, and there's a constant almost circular conversation about what is the board's role in the context of strategy. And so, lots of our Founders will be going, I don't know, a board is not really relevant to me, but at some point you might end up with a governance board. And so, when you do your Australian Institute of Company Directors certification and so on, and it very clearly says the board's role is strategy. And then the conversation comes. Is it the board's role to create strategy? Is it the board's role to validate strategy? Is it the board's role to approve strategy? What are you finding in the market, because you work a lot more with boards than I do. What do you find boards believe their role to be and what do you think their role is, in the context of strategy for it to be effective?

‍

[00:39:37] Rosie Yeo: Yeah, well, so I think you're right, there's lots of differing views that you still do see some boards who are kind of sitting there going, right, this is our job. We're going to keep it. We'll let the CEO in the room, but the rest of us are doing strategy. I don't think that's optimal. I mean, for me, I absolutely believe that you should be having conversations in the room with the board and executive together. If you're having the big future conversations, you have those conversations together. You work through ideas and options together. The management team then comes back with the assisted by the consultant who's written a fantastic report at the end of the session. You know, it comes back with what that strategy outline should look like and then the board's option is to then look at it again, with the benefit of hindsight and a bit of time having elapsed between the conversations and that, because you know, we can all get excited about things and then have to look at it again in the cold hard light of day. And then the board can sort of make that decision or go back to the, you know, and provide that expert advice. But I do think that having people in the same room at the same. Again, it's about, this is how you get shared ambition that people understand and sign up to. So, it's got to be cooperative and yes, the board has the ultimate sign off the board can make changes, make suggestions down the track, but at least have those conversations together as part of the process.

‍

[00:40:55] Sean Steele: What I like about that is it kind of, that's true diversity and inclusion in action, right? Like that's getting the best of all the minds you've got available to be part of the input even if not, everybody's responsible for the output. So, I really like that. You know, there's plenty of organisations where the CEO will develop strategy maybe with their leadership team and just present it to the board and some organisations where the boards are essentially coming up maybe with the CEO and then the sort of telling the leadership team, this is what it is, get on with it and execute it. But I think that's a really nice and optimal blend if you've got a quality board, and I think also the right relationship between the board and the leadership team. But that's how you build relationship too, right? Like that's an incredible process to get some incredible depth, both functional technical expertise along with much deeper industry experience or broad corporate director sort of experience to inform.

‍

[00:41:50] Rosie Yeo: And can I add one thing in there too, because I do also see that sometimes. And again, just trying to get the optimal approach to this. Sometimes people assume that that means that if you've got the board and executive in the room, that means your strategy day is going to require, the first four hours will be presentations from the executive team to the board. And that's not a constructive all-in strategy. Yep. Everybody needs to have the information on the table. But that's not a strategy meeting. That's a presentation. Series of presentations.

‍

[00:42:20] Sean Steele: Yep. No, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, that's not exactly a live and engaged conversation. It's like a, you're presenting a board a product. Okay. What do you guys think? It's like, hang on a second. Now we're going to spend the next four hours after that debating the presentations rather than actually working on the future. Really nice. Last question from me, Rosie, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you really wish that I had? Because, you know, quite often it's easy to miss things in these conversations and sometimes you are thinking, I wish you'd asked that question because people really need to understand that. Did I missed something?

‍

[00:42:57] Rosie Yeo: So, the thing I love to talk about with people is how do you get in the right mindset to create a great strategy? Because it's actually, you know, people think as long as you've set the date and you've set the date and you've got the agenda and off you go. You know, you've brought in the experts, whatever it is, but that's not actually the, of course you need to do all that thing.

‍
That's the organisational side of it, but you actually need to, and we talked about it earlier, just give yourself permission to take some time out to make sure that you are casting your mind more broadly than what's right in front of you and what you know, that you are actually bringing in some additional people or you are asking some additional questions that help you ask yourself and ask members of your team, what if to bring in that imaginative side of things to also focus on what about, look further ahead. Look at all the enablers and hurdles and other things that are not even predictable right now, sort of cast the net a bit wider, and then always end it and be willing to end your strategy sessions with thinking about what matters most. So, you know, you talked about it with your process as well, being prepared to let go of some things and just narrow in on the really important things that are going to make the difference. We can't do everything, so we do need to, part of strategy is about learning to choose.

‍

[00:44:23] Sean Steele: If people knew, if you think about, in that context you mentioned up front, you know, some people are like, oh God, another strategy day. Like I've been to some in the last 12 months where there was, I could almost feel everybody had come into the room. These wasn't my strategy session. I'd been invited to it where there was probably 25 people and I could see people that entered with this, I've got so much stuff to do. I can't believe I have to sit in a strategy day. This is going to be crap. But had they been given good pre-framing questions, things to really chew on, and part of the setup was, by the way, we might be making some pretty important decisions about the things that we're going to let go of to create space for the things that are new. I think you'd have a lot of people's attention pretty quickly and some really good thinking about the future and stuff that they think; this is my opportunity to contribute to a transformation. You know, it's not just going to be a extended business planning session, which is very. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that, Rosie. Well, I have had a great time with you. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom that you share with us today. How can people get in touch with you or follow along with what you're doing?

‍

[00:45:23] Rosie Yeo: Oh, thanks Sean. It's been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed it too, and learned a lot from you. So, if people are interested in my book - Go for Bold. You can go to goforbold.com.au to buy a copy of that, or it's available at all good bookstores and maybe some crappy ones. Who knows? And there's also rosieyeo.com.au. So, thanks again, Sean. It's been great.

‍

[00:45:44] Sean Steele: Beautiful. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Rosie. Well, folks, look, we'd love to know what questions that you have about strategy or things that might have resonated with you today that you'd love to tease out with us. Feel free to send us an email at [email protected]. Rosie or I will come back to you on those, I'll forward those on to Rosie if we get some of those through. If you’ve valued the information you got today, of course, if you can subscribe or leave us a review, we'd much appreciate that, helps other people find it. If you're not driving your car at the time that you're listening to this, or riding a bike or something else like that, might be worth just hitting the share button, just take a screenshot, send it to a friend, just send it to somebody who, you know, is in a position where they probably need to think about the next three to five years and maybe might be able to get more out of period if they were to ask themselves some good quality questions, like some of the ones they've heard today. Thank you so much everybody. You've been listening to the ScaleUps Podcast. Thank you, Rosie. I'm Sean Steele, and I look forward to speaking to you again next week.