Spotlight On Podcast
Spotlight On Podcast
Spotlight On with James Hadley, UK Managing Partner at Bain & Company
James Hadley, Senior Partner at Bain & Company and current UK Managing Partner, shares insights from his nearly 30-year career on how corporate strategy functions are evolving to meet today's business challenges.
Whether you are a corporate strategist, consultant, or executive navigating strategic decisions, this conversation offers invaluable perspective on how the practice of strategy is evolving, and what it takes to stay relevant in an increasingly complex business landscape.
Welcome to Spotlight On, the must-listen podcast series where visionary leaders, global executives, trailblazing entrepreneurs and top-tier experts come together to share their inspiring stories and tackle the hottest issues facing businesses today, brought to you by the Barton Partnership, an award-winning global talent solution organization. We specialize in executive search, independent consulting and consulting solutions from strategy through to execution. Our mission to help businesses accelerate their growth by connecting them with world-class strategy and transformation talent. Tune in and join us as we shine a spotlight on the game changers and thought leaders who are shaping the future of business. Today I'm talking to James Hadley. James is a senior partner at Bain Company and currently serving as the managing partner for UK, ireland and South Africa. He joined Bain in London in 1996 and since then has worked with clients around the world. He focused on strategy and transformation and led Bain's strategy in EMEA for 10 years before taking on the UK managing partner role. He's the former managing partner for the Middle East practice and served two terms on the firm's Global Compensation and Promotion Committee. Outside of Bain, james actively supports a number of charities and social enterprises. He serves on the board of the Social Business Trust, which channels investment and in-kind support from corporate partners to high-growth, high-impact social enterprises and on the board of Quorum, a group of specialist charities supporting hundreds of thousands of children, young people and families every year. He's also the chair of the Quorum Life Education. James is also a member of the UK government's Business Women Council.
Nick:James, great to see you today. Thanks for joining me on this podcast. This is one I've been looking forward to for a long time because, like you, I've been in this industry a long time now and I've seen it from the other side of the fence. I started my career in recruitment, placing people from Bain 25 years ago into corporates. You've been with Bain a similar amount of time now, so obviously you know it's going to be great talking about your experience, not only your journey with Bain. You know your perspective on the market, especially when we talk about corporate strashy as well, because I think that's a topic close to both of our hearts. Let's start with you, though, because I'm really keen to hear about your journey. Obviously, tell us. I'm really keen to hear about your journey. Obviously, tell us about your career history. Tell us about your journey at Bain and your role today, please.
James:Thank you, Nick, and first of all very, very happy to be here chatting with you. You're right, I've been in Bain for a long time. I actually joined the firm perilously close to 30 years ago straight out of university, which explains my youthful looks which your listeners can't see.
James:I joined in 96. I've worked with Bain around the world in the US in the late 90s, sort of toured around continental Europe. I spent five years in the Middle East, 2008 to 2013,. And then back to London. I've done, as you can imagine and as you know I've done a lot of different things in Bain in that time, including serving in a bunch of leadership roles. I'm currently the managing partner in the UK. I did the same role in the Middle East while I was there. I've served on various Bain governance committees, which I won't bore you with but perhaps most relevant for this discussion. I've been for a long time deeply involved in all things strategy at BAME. I had the privilege of helping to create the strategy practice 20 years ago.
Nick:I led it in our MIA region for many years and I'm one of those people in BAME that's more affiliated to strategy as a capability than I am to any one industry affiliated to strategy as a capability than I am to any one industry, and this is why I'm really excited about this conversation because, as I say, for the last 25 plus years I've been recruiting into corporate strategy functions across FTSE-listed blue-chip Fortune 500 companies and I'm really keen to understand your perspective on how corporate strategy certainly over the last five years and perhaps even going forward has evolved and will continue to evolve in this ever-changing market. But Bain is obviously known as a tier one consulting firm. You work with senior leadership teams. How have client expectations of strategy consulting changed, particularly amongst FTSE 100 companies?
James:The short answer to that is that expectations increase steadily and relentlessly over time, as you would expect we are. By definition, firms should only hire people like us when they need to access capabilities they don't have in-house on their most important strategic challenges, the items on their agenda that have the most value. And certainly with people like us, they pay for that service and they should expect a great return on investment. And so expectations have gone up and up and up the whole time I've been in the industry. What are some of the themes I mean? The obvious one is the call for ever deeper and deeper expertise, both industry expertise and capability or functional expertise. That's typically meant that clients are looking for global depth. You know they want to see that we've done whatever it is or we've got knowledge of whatever it is, global in nature and deep.
James:There has been a shift, certainly at our end of the market, further and further into more operational type work, and further into more operational type work it's sending further into implementation. In fact, that old distinction of strategy and implementation barely exists anymore. As far as I'm concerned, when I was first in consulting that was a big deal, but you know, I don't think it is anymore, and people always used to say, oh, bain went further into implementation than the other strategy firms, I would say even back in the 80s and 90s. What Bain was trying to do was get results and help clients get results, and that meant sticking around for longer to make sure that could happen. And I think the whole industry has shifted in that direction. I think clients' expectations have moved in that direction. Clients want results and they want a return on their investment and increasingly they expect consulting firms like us to put our money where our mouths are, and I think that's all positive.
Nick:The client expectations. I mean, there was quite a I wouldn't say damning article, but there was quite an interesting piece in the Times last year where they did a review of McKinsey Bain BCG and they looked at over 700 executives and project managers that had worked with the MBB and they found that 84% came back saying that their involvement was unhelpful. Only 13% felt that consulting was boosting projects. There is sort of always an underlying skepticism towards the impact of consulting firms et cetera, etc. How has bain been adapting to ensure that your recommendations remain, I guess, truly bespoke and and that you're leading, you know, genuine sort of transformational outcomes for your clients well, I'm glad, nick, that you've referenced that delightful article about the industry.
James:We were honestly scratching our heads a bit about that and where the data came from and who they talked to. The reality is there's always been skepticism about consulting in general. Just look at the comments thread on any FT article that majors on any consulting firm and you will find all kinds of criticism and bile. And, frankly, you and I both know that some of that criticism is justified right. And, frankly, you and I both know that some of that criticism is justified right. We all know of consulting work that has conspicuously failed to deliver the results that were targeted. Of course, we also know of internal projects and companies that have conspicuously failed to deliver the results that were targeted, and that's the very reason that people look for external advice. The very reason that people look for external advice, you know. We know that there's a strong rationale for companies to access that outside capability for their biggest challenges. And we also know that when a partnership really clicks between good consultants and executives that are truly change-oriented, then amazing things can happen. The problem is that doesn't always happen in every case and I think it's sometimes also not evident to everybody who's involved on the client side what results are really happening. So leave it to the ceos to judge the ones who make the you know, the buyers who've made that investment. Um, and you know, I would say we, we are. I mean, look, we get, we get feedback on things that haven't gone right, but yeah, overwhelmingly, the feedback we get from our clients is is very positive. Um, and it's particularly true now, actually, the clients are saying we, we need your help more than ever.
James:When you think about the, the cocktail and of challenges and opportunities that come from geopolitical uncertainty, the whole post-globalization shift, technology and AI, the energy transition, the climate change problem is not going to go away, like what some people say about it. Industries will transform and companies are going to have to look very different in order to compete, survive and thrive. And so what we see and observe and what we hear from our clients is that our type of advice is more relevant than ever. It's up to us to meet the high, or exceed the high expectations that our clients have.
James:It's quite difficult for me often to comment on other firms, because I've spent the best one of 30 years working for one firm, right, but I can tell you that internally in Bain, our mission is entirely geared to results. It's how we measure ourselves, it's what we celebrate internally. So we're constantly pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves and evolving and innovating to meet those needs, getting ahead of them where we can. That's a constant investment that we're making in our own capabilities, but we also, by the way, for what it's worth, recognize that we don't have all the capabilities needed in-house either. The history of the industry, I think, is littered with examples of firms that have convinced themselves that they can do everything and they can't, or they create conflicts of interest that can't be resolved. And so we, increasingly, are partnering with others where we need to in order to make sure that we're bringing the full set of capabilities that our clients actually need to deliver the results that they're looking for.
Nick:Or making acquisitions. You know bringing in I saw, you know, smaller firms, more targeted, specialist consulting firms that could bolster the proposition.
James:Yeah, look, we've done that in a number of cases. Where you know where it makes sense to have that capability in-house, we will bring it in-house. Marketing, digital marketing capabilities, whether it's procurement, whether it's certain tech capabilities we've made those decisions because we feel that we can add greater value to our clients in having those capabilities in-house. We think the relevant talent can thrive in the Bain family under the Bain umbrella. There are other spaces that we've deliberately chosen not to enter. We think the structure of a Bain company is not right for supporting those types of talent to thrive.
Nick:If we look at sort of the corporate strategy function in UK companies over the last three to five years, obviously, as you touched upon, a lot of these have evolved. I mean, certainly from our side we've seen sort of a corporate strategy function go from centralized to decentralized etc. And, funny enough, I did a bit of research around this just to really understand how or where corporate strategy sits today. And I looked at the FTSE 100 and we did a bit of research analysis on this. And, funny enough, I did a bit of research around this just to really understand how or where corporate strategy sits today. And I looked at the FTSE 100 and we did a bit of research analysis on this. And what was interesting to me and I don't know what your thoughts are on this but if we looked at the FTSE 100, when we looked at the FTSE 100, we could only identify 29 individuals in 29 companies that had an identifiable head of strategy that sat on the executive committee or on the executive board of a FTSE 100 company.
Nick:Now, I haven't done this research five years ago, but I would guesstimate that that number would have been far higher five to eight years ago. And it was interesting because of the 29 that were identified. 20 of those individuals had less than three years tenure in that role And've come from, you know the likes of mckinsey, bain, bcg, etc. And other consulting firms, but I was actually surprised about the the the number being so small. What are your views on that and what have you seen in terms of the evolution of corporate strategy?
James:it's interesting this topic, because I mean the truth. The truth is we don't make a study of corporate strategy functions. Yeah, we're very often working alongside them, sometimes we work completely independently of them and usually our clients are not in strategy functions. It's typically a working alongside teaming and we always value that teaming. So you know, I had to have a think about this when you mentioned to me that you wanted to talk about this topic and I talked to a few colleagues as well and I've got to tell you I think it's the dreaded pattern of no pattern we see on a number of different topics. We see the pendulum swing back and forth over and over again. Right, and you call that one right, which is the extent to which there are, which goes with the role of the center in complex organizations, the extent to which the team is centralized versus in BUs, the size goes up and down. The seniority of the individual leading and the reporting line, the bundling with other functions, the pendulums on all of those things are swinging back and forth, a function of the preference of the CEO. Sometimes it's a function of the preference of the board as well and what the board demands of the CEO. There isn't a pattern here, the existence of a senior strategy lead who reports to the CEO or is on the ex-co. That has remained low for as long as I can remember. That is the exception rather than the rule. For the individuals who are leading those teams, where do they sit? Sometimes they're with finance, sometimes they're elsewhere. Sometimes they're with finance, sometimes they're elsewhere. We don't see particular patterns in how the size instruction reporting line of the functions have evolved. Where we see a very strong pattern is in the way the companies are thinking about the strategy process Interesting, and you know, I would characterize that as a move away from sort of rigid annual strategy and planning processes towards processes that are much more.
James:I slightly hesitate to use the word agile, but you could use the word agile, let's say more continuous and issues-driven. And you know I think there's a bunch of good reasons for that. Part of it is a recognition that the old way of doing things is not fit for purpose in the current fast-moving, turbulent world that we see. Arguably, by the way, it never was really fit for purpose, but certainly now it's a struggle for for many companies, um, and there's a bunch of reasons for that. What one is that I mean? But by definition um, if you've got a world that is changing, you can't wait for the next year's annual planning process. You can't. You can't wait to resolve the issue that comes up. So either you end up waiting, which is always a mistake, or you have to. You know, do something separate.
James:Very often leadership teams are not investing enough time in those annual planning processes, so they get. They get short-changed. You know there's there isn't enough time to really debate alternative futures, alternative options. Very often it devolves into being a sort of negotiation of next year's budget, which means, by definition, you're not having the big long-term strategic discussions, you're definitely not talking about true full potential, because if I'm an executive who's effectively negotiating my next year's plan, it's not really in my interest to talk about full potential. And so, in the worst case, those annual processes get separated from the way the business is actually run.
James:What we're seeing and I think you know there's different language being attached to this, you know whether it's lean strategy or agile or living strategy. There's a very similar language that we've used to describe it, but there's a distinct shift away from resolving issues in an annual process to a continuous issue-driven approach, and it's very interesting when you ask CEOs about that. That's how they talk about spending their time, and I think that's really, really important in all of this. And if you ask them how they do their deep work, to use that language, they talk about spending a lot of time on specific strategic issues and resolving them and moving on, rather than kind of waiting for a big process to do it. And so the best companies, I think, are distinctly separating what we'd call the the strategy development agenda from the strategy delivery agenda. And on the development agenda is essentially a backlog of strategic issues that need to be cracked, one after the other, just cycling through them. And as they cycle through them, when they've gone through a rigorous process on each issue, they adjust the strategy and move on. And that issue then drops into the delivery agenda because now you've got people executing on it and you're assembling the best people to work on those issues at the right level of seniority in the organization.
James:Which, by the way, just raises another issue which is, uh, who's the right person to lead an issue or work on an issue, versus the person who's available? Let me, let me just quite warn executive who said I don't want the person who's available to work on this. The right person is probably not available. Do I need to break glass to make that person available? That then poses some really interesting questions for the strategy team. So what's your role in that as a strategy professional? It's probably not and we can come back to this later and I'm happy to offer some advice on this but it's probably not being the expert on everything or positioning yourself as the person who can crack everything. But it might well be working with executives, working with the line to support them to crack the problem.
Nick:Have you seen, to a point then, a change and a shift in how people are thinking about their strategic planning process. To your point, they're being more reactive, based on the immediate needs given political conditions, economic, geopolitical challenges, etc.
James:The yearly strategic planning process becoming more and more redundant now within organizations they're becoming increasingly irrelevant and I think you can see out there a wide range of situations in companies. Some companies have deconstructed and reconstructed their whole approach to doing strategy and have got very formal, continuous strategy processes. There are others who are effectively still running a pseudo-redundant annual planning process and they're solving strategy issues on the side and the two are drifting further and further apart. If I'm a CEO and there's an issue, I'm going to be looking for that to get resolved right. If nobody's adapted the strategic planning process to do that, then I'm just going to ask for it to be done outside the planning process. It won't be to appease shareholders, because I need an answer, I need to make a decision.
Nick:And the type of work that Bain's doing now. Is it a mix of sort of long-term strategic planning or short-term sort of firefighting, dealing with immediate challenges?
James:Our strategy work has always been a mix, I would say. On balance, it tends towards more medium to long term, because it's often in the medium to long term where the biggest decisions are and where it makes sense to have somebody support, hold up the mirror, bring new facts and data and so on. But it's not exclusively that. I mean there will often be short term issues that need to be resolved. I mean there'll often be short-term issues that need to be resolved and then, of course, more of the operational end of the spectrum we might be doing very short-term. They are strategic in nature but it's not strategy per se. So reinventing the supply chain in anticipation or response to a change in global trade landscape, that's pretty strategic. It wouldn't be our strategy practice doing that work. It would be our performance improvement or supply chain teams doing that work.
Nick:There isn't a one-shoe-fiddle type scenario. There isn't an off-the-shelf sort of. This is what corporate strategy should look like, and therefore this is the size and scale of the team and this is the capability that you need. You could have two companies of a similar size in the same sector, but two very distinct strashy functions operating in two very distinct ways, and I've always found that very interesting as well. There's no blueprint for what good looks like.
James:It's dependent on the need of the business and that's absolutely right, and you know there's no, there's no. There are many ways to skin a cat, right? Yes, of the approaches that work, there are multiple different to skin a cat, right? Yes, of the approaches that work, there are multiple different types, and part of that is based on the nature of the business, right? So if I'm operating in an environment, in a true corporate strategy environment, where there's a portfolio of businesses that are quite different Depending on how different they are and how fast-moving the relevant industries are, and so on, then I'm going to design my function and my approach in different ways.
James:Of course, even within one industry, there are incredibly different characteristics. We see a very heavy move towards agile-type processes around strategy, with product owners organized around products. In the world of energy and natural resources, the processes that look a bit more traditional, organized around an annual cycle, can be more effective because you're on very long-term planning cycles, yeah, and in those industries, we've also seen more integration of capabilities around energy transition, sustainability, sustainability and so on, because if I'm in utilities or if I'm an oil and gas major, then it's absolutely central to my strategy, whereas if I work in grocery retail, the energy transition is probably just a little bit less pressing and strategic.
Nick:Let's talk about skills and capability. You touched upon this at the start, and what you highlighted was that there's been an evolution in what is required now in a strategy function. You said at the start of this conversation that's changed, and now it's deep expertise, it's functional expertise, it's global depth and it's operational experience. Is that what you're seeing, then, in that shift around how companies think about the skills and capabilities that they need in these teams?
James:By definition, your internal team is going to need to be more generalist in its capability and ultimately shepherding an end-to-end strategy process of whatever nature. Right, not rerunning the discussion we just had. What we've seen in those teams is absolutely deeper industry expertise, no question, I mean, those individuals are very often extremely deep experts in their industries, but they're unlikely to be functional capability experts. That's exactly when you go external to look for very specific expertise of that nature. The church is a little bit broader now in the sense that you might need. You're unlikely to find members of those teams who haven't had some significant exposure to energy transition issues. Right, it's just. Decarbonization is just, it's just going to be part of the job description, and so that, of course, has evolved. I think as we enter the next chapter, we're more and more going to see people in those roles who have to be tech savvy.
James:Generally in business is that the very old model where you did the strategy and then asked the question OK, what tech do we need to implement? Has been dead for a long time. Now is one question, it's the strategy question, and the tech question is one question, and that's going to become more and more true as companies need to look beyond the experimentation they've done with AI to scale AI transformation. I don't think you're going to be surprised by this statement, but just make no mistake, the wave of change that's coming from AI is going to be a once-in-a-generation wave.
Nick:Yeah, and we know that that's going to have an impact in consulting. How is that going to change? I guess Is it going to have the same impact in corporate strategy and strategic functions, do you think?
James:I'm going to insist on starting with what is going to change in companies. So forget consulting, forget the corporate strategy functions. We're looking at a set of industries and companies that are going to be fundamentally transformed by AI. You know it's part of the job description of every CEO right now to be thinking both today forward and future back about what is their industry going to look like? How is the basis of competition going to shift? How do they need to retool their businesses in order to be competitive and winning businesses in those future worlds? So everything hangs off that, in my view, businesses in those future worlds. So everything hangs off that, in my view, consulting firms are going to need to be able to offer the capabilities around advising on what is that future-backed vision of the firm? What is it going to take to deliver AI-based transformation at scale? Because at the moment, what we're seeing is a string of experimentation that is not scaling. Yeah, and I think if corporate strategy teams are not making the same shift, it's going to be very difficult to learn. In the same way as consulting firms will lose relevance if they can't be part of that discussion, then corporate strategy teams will lose relevance if they can't be part of that discussion, and corporate strategy teams will lose relevance if they can't be part of that discussion.
James:Now to your other point. Of course, consulting firms have their own AI transformations to do. I don't think there's a single professional services firm out there that doesn't have that right at the top of their list of strategic priorities right now. So that you know the wave of change that is coming in. You know, professional white-collar jobs is massive and that's going to come off the back of very different ways of working for professional services firms.
James:And you know and the truth, I don't think anyone knows exactly where that's going to land yet over different time horizons. I think, if you take the short to medium term, there's a pretty high degree of confidence in consulting that this is going to look like previous ways of technology change, where the new technology allows us to deliver better results faster and more to the client and will free up the humans to do distinctly human things. Yes, help deliver those results. Once you go out a little bit further, then it gets a bit fuzzy, right and and there are different theories about what will happen by that stage. I think we're also. You know, one can have different theories about what will be happening in society as a whole.
Nick:It won't be a problem for you and me. You and I could just focus on short to medium term impact.
James:Well, I don't know. You know I could be running Hadley Co consulting with just me and a bunch of bots in 30 years time.
Nick:You could do absolutely. Let's talk about the sort of the digital transformation side of things, because obviously that's become a massive sort of aspect and real trend in terms of again shaping the roles of heads of strash in. Again, as we've seen in major firms and as you've talked about, the narrative has changed from the thinking to the doing. We talked about sort of corporate strashing function and a transformation function being two distinct areas, but again, the trend that we've seen over the last few years is those functions coming together, certainly in relation to digital transformation initiatives. What's been your experience of that? What have you seen from your side of the fence?
James:We've seen multiple waves of transformation coming from technology and, yes, okay, you can loosely talk about one wave as being digital and then another wave of being AI, there's a wave of quantum to come, etc. In reality, there are lots of smaller waves that are joining up A high and increasing pace of change enabled by technology in business. How is it changing the role of strategy in organizations? It's very much along the lines that I was describing a few minutes ago. Right, ability to separate tech from strategy is no longer there. So, whether it's happening already or not, you'll find a very different situation in every 2100.
James:Strategy capability for strategy professionals to be framing the strategic future of companies based on what's going to happen and what's going to be enabled by technology is absolutely essential, so there's no question of that. Will it again to the one of the earlier points will it therefore demand different capabilities? Probably over time, but at moment I don't think companies have time for that. I think if you're working in corporate strategy, if you're the senior lead of a chief strategy officer, you better be talking to the chief technology officer and joining arms, and probably the chief people officer and joining arms around. What is the future of our business and how is strategy, tech and people going to come together, and what is the change that we're going to need to make? I'm not sure companies have time necessarily to hire lots of different people into those roles, but they certainly need to be thinking differently and doing different.
Nick:Talking about doing things differently. I guess how things are evolving. You talked about this again before. Climate change isn't going away. Esg, pre-covid, was probably the number one topic that every board and every Strashe team was focused on. Covid hit AI is now coming to play. Where are you seeing ESG? Is corporate Strashe still driving ESG and sustainability initiatives, or has it?
James:dropped down the list, as it were. There's no question in our minds that three big issues facing business today are geopolitical change, post-globalization number one. Number two, tech and AI. And number three, energy transition and decarbonization. There's probably a fourth around capital, actually, but let's not go there today. There's probably a fourth around capital actually, but let's not go there today. Those changes will also trigger, in turn, a different way of thinking about the role of the firm and how people work together in firms in the future, but those three big ones are going to need to be on the whiteboard of every CEO and every strategy team In the very short term.
James:Of course, we've seen some waxing and waning the level of focus on ESG as a broader topic. That's been there for a long time as an issue. I mean, of course, climate change is something that we've known about for a long time and there's been a building commitment and pressure to do something about that. I think what we saw coming out of COVID was, you know, one of the things that happened in COVID executive teams had a bit of time and space to think about the future and were inspired by some of the very rapid operational transformations they did during that period of time to think about longer-term change and business model change during that period of time to think about longer-term change and business model change, and I think what that created was a lot of froth about ESG as a broader topic, and that partly contributed to the post-COVID boom in demand for consulting.
James:I think subsequent events, whether it's war in Ukraine, whether it's changes in political leadership in the US, mean that there are different views now on ESG as a topic overall, and increasingly we see it being disaggregated into its meaningful parts.
James:Most executives that I talk to would agree that the energy transition issue is not going away, and so the question about how relevant it is on the strategic agenda in the very short term depends a lot on what industry you're in, what geography you're in, but it'll be on everybody's agenda over time. In terms of how that plays into corporate strategy functions, it's a very different industry by industry there are there are some industries where, even at the peak of of sort of interest in the esg, it remained completely separate. Yeah, it was more of a compliance function or an emerging compliance function, and in many of those companies it's it's receded completely at this point. In other other industries and I've talked about a few earlier in the discussion. Energy transition and decarbonisation is so central to strategy that you know there makes no sense for it to be separate, and so it's a fundamental part of the strategy. Brief.
Nick:You touched upon this, but just to be clear, as you see it now, the sort of the three biggest strategic challenges facing companies over the next five years are the geopolitical situation, ai and decarbonization. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Final question then and listen, it's been a brilliant conversation, but final question here, then, is what is the one piece of advice you would give to a new head of Strashy stepping into a role today?
James:I'm going to slightly circumvent the question because I think one piece of advice is quite difficult If I had to boil it down to one thing.
Nick:Don't boil it down to one thing.
James:Um don't boil it down to one thing what would you say if you were sitting? Yeah, if you were sitting down, I was, I was you carrying up to boiling it, do it do it to one thing go on so look, number number one is work with the line and co-create with the line.
James:Your job cannot be to resolve all strategic issues within the strategy function. It's just not going to work. You need to think about yourself as being maybe the best way to describe it is in service to the line, in service to the executive and to the board, and facilitating a process to get to the best set of outcomes. To get to the best set of outcomes, work with the best line leaders for the issue you're working on. Co-create with them. Make them the heroes. The outcomes will be better and the success that you'll be able to celebrate might end up being ascribed to that executive, but you'll know that you helped create that set of outcomes. Don't try to work separately. Work very closely with the client.
James:Having said that, the job has to be to force the hard conversations. You know all too often strategy processes devolve into politeness and nobody wants to call the issue. Let's be honest. There is politics in some organizations. Don't let the hard conversations be avoided. Now you don't need to be confrontational. You need to make sure that if the hard conversations are being avoided, you put them on the table. That's going to be uncomfortable at times, but you'll be respected for doing that. I guess the third thing that goes with that is you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to be the ones always coming up with the answers, but you can be the guardian of a good process and a high quality process.
James:It comes a little bit with forcing the hard conversations. You know, all too often strategy processes are just not high quality enough. You know you need the right question, you need the facts on the table, you need a proper assessment of options because, as we all know, strategy is all about choice. But it's amazing how many strategy processes you see where there's no choice. It's what we call the Goldilocks situation this one's too cold, this one's too hot, this one's just right.
James:Being the guardian of a good process is a really important role you can play and within the construct of that good process, it's much easier to force the hard conversations, it's much easier to engage the line and to have them shine and then, ultimately, you can play a really important role on behalf of the CEO and the executive of. This is our living strategy. This is the state of the art, this is our current statement of strategy. Here's the backlog of issues that we're working through. We cracked that issue with a proper process last quarter and we changed the strategy in the following ways. Being the guardian of that audit trail, if you like, is actually a really important role Brilliant conversation.
Nick:I've been looking forward to this one for a long time now. So thank you for making the time to share your experience with us today. That's been fantastic. I've really enjoyed that. There's a lot of soundbites out of that which I'm sure is going to add a lot of value to our network. So thank you for your time. Good to talk to you today. I really appreciate it.
James:My great pleasure.