Speaker 1: Do you wake up on Monday morning excitant for the
Speaker 1: week ahead, or do you have to drag yourself out
Speaker 1: of bed dreading the fact that you have a whole
Speaker 1: five days of work until the next weekend. With employee
Speaker 1: engagement flatlining across the globe, most leaders know or who
Speaker 1: are now starting to realize just how important an engaged
Speaker 1: workforce is. Phil Chambers thinks a lot about employee engagement,
Speaker 1: and not just because he co founded Pecon, an employee
Speaker 1: engagement software company which has recently been acquired by Workday.
Speaker 1: Phil wanted to empower leaders with real time, actionable data
Speaker 1: on how their decisions were impacting their staff.
Speaker 2: My company, Inventim.
Speaker 1: Has used Pecon to track our own employee engagement for
Speaker 1: several years, and when I got connected to Phil, I
Speaker 1: jumped at the chance to have him on how I
Speaker 1: work and pick his brains about how he thinks about
Speaker 1: engagement at work. So outs Phil use his own technology
Speaker 1: to lead and motivate his team? And how does he
Speaker 1: deliberately reduce virtual meetings an employee engagement killer, I must
Speaker 1: say at pecon? And how did Phil use his partner's
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaking skills to boost employee engagement. My name is
Speaker 1: doctor amanthe Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder
Speaker 1: of behavioral science consultancy invent Him, and this is how
Speaker 1: I work, a show about how to help you.
Speaker 2: Do your best work.
Speaker 1: So I'm always interested in why founders pick the ideas
Speaker 1: that they do when it comes to starting a brand
Speaker 1: new company that they will probably dedicate the next decade
Speaker 1: of their life too.
Speaker 2: And specifically I wanted.
Speaker 1: To know how did Phil approach goal setting, particularly in
Speaker 1: those early days at Pecon.
Speaker 3: I think half of the trick to starting a new
Speaker 3: business is to really, you know, pick an area that's
Speaker 3: going to be big in five years, which is harder
Speaker 3: than it sounds, right, But so the challenge that you
Speaker 3: have when you start a new business is often that,
Speaker 3: you know, we sort of approached it with great gusto,
Speaker 3: and we actually we wrote some goals on the board
Speaker 3: on the first day, so second to January twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: went out to the stationary shop, bought some pens and
Speaker 3: some of that funny plastic paper that sticks on walls,
Speaker 3: and then we kind of wrote down a product vision
Speaker 3: for the next five years, which was surprisingly precedent, and
Speaker 3: you know, and a lot of it turned out to
Speaker 3: be true, but I think the difficulty with goal setting
Speaker 3: then came a little bit later, and that was really
Speaker 3: once we'd hired the first team. We were around sort
Speaker 3: of eight to ten people, and it became I think
Speaker 3: we've probably had more people than we had tasks at
Speaker 3: the time, and it became quite hard to really focus
Speaker 3: everyone on one thing that they could do. And I
Speaker 3: think that, you know, we there was a bit of
Speaker 3: frustration around around the team, around you know, why weren't
Speaker 3: we being successful instantly. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: startup you know stories which just blow up in nine
Speaker 3: months and then they're you know, they're got a billion
Speaker 3: dollar evaluation. But it wasn't like that a peak on
Speaker 3: at all. You know, we had a sort of methodical
Speaker 3: way of prototyping, and none of us were domain experts
Speaker 3: in what we were trying to do, which I think
Speaker 3: gave us a sort of unique set of issues in
Speaker 3: the fact that we didn't really have any customers, and
Speaker 3: without any customers, you can't really.
Speaker 4: Do any learning. And if you're not doing any learning,
Speaker 4: then you don't really know what to build.
Speaker 3: So we we sort of sat down and scratched our
Speaker 3: heads about this, and so rather than it turned into
Speaker 3: a lot of the fly situation, we said, you know,
Speaker 3: my co founder Dan came to this idea of putting
Speaker 3: a big blackboard in the office with the sort of
Speaker 3: four stages of what we call peak happiness at the time.
Speaker 3: And this was really, you know, ultimately what you would
Speaker 3: know as sort of sales stages these days.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It was effectively a pipeline view of the world, except
Speaker 3: that the ultimate goal wasn't to sell these initial companies anything.
Speaker 3: In fact, we explicitly decided, no, we're not interested in
Speaker 3: making money here. We just want to get twenty companies
Speaker 3: that would be very disappointed if they couldn't use Peakon
Speaker 3: by the end of the first year. And then we
Speaker 3: just simply printed out the logos of these companies. So
Speaker 3: and then we just said to everybody who worked to
Speaker 3: peak On at the Simeon said, the only thing that
Speaker 3: anybody needs to focus on is moving logos along this board.
Speaker 4: So if you're kind of unsure of what to do
Speaker 4: when you come.
Speaker 3: In in the morning, have a look at the board and
Speaker 3: either get some new logos for the board or move
Speaker 3: the logos that we have along the board, which basically meant,
Speaker 3: you know, working with those customers to get them to
Speaker 3: a state where they deployed use Pekan were happy with it.
Speaker 3: And that was incredibly powerful, right because every single morning
Speaker 3: we came in and we all stood around this blackboard
Speaker 3: and then we just talked around what was going on
Speaker 3: with these logos, and suddenly, you know, we went from
Speaker 3: sort of pointing things each other about why things weren't
Speaker 3: working to getting this incredible momentum. And you know, some
Speaker 3: of those customers, when I look back at photographs of
Speaker 3: those board, were some you know, ultimately inflection points in
Speaker 3: the growth of the business. And you know, one of
Speaker 3: the logos on that board was Delivery Hero, which at
Speaker 3: the time I think was a three hundred person startup
Speaker 3: in Berlin. But you know, ultimately, as you may know, became,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the world's most successful stories in
Speaker 3: food delivery and had a five billion IPO and is
Speaker 3: now a top top thirty tax company in Germany. So
Speaker 3: little did we know at the time, but that the
Speaker 3: work that we were doing there was was pivotal to
Speaker 3: the future of the company.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: Now I know that creating an MVP or minimum viable
Speaker 1: product was really important in the early days, and that Peacon,
Speaker 1: which is a tech product, started as a piece of paper.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to me about that? Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 3: It was really a function of the fact we didn't
Speaker 3: have a technical team initially, so we were four co founders,
Speaker 3: but only two of us had managed to extract ourselves
Speaker 3: from our current job at the time, and you know,
Speaker 3: with the best word in the world. Although we had
Speaker 3: computer sides, backgrounds weren't that coding skills were a bit rusty.
Speaker 3: So we sort of set out to read a lot
Speaker 3: of the research you know in history. Peak on is
Speaker 3: based on organizational psychology, as you know, but it's implemented
Speaker 3: in a way that hadn't really been.
Speaker 4: Done in companies before. So we used some off the
Speaker 4: shelf tools.
Speaker 3: We said, okay, how could we sort of build a
Speaker 3: model of what we're trying to do here without actually
Speaker 3: productizing it in software. So we collected some survey data
Speaker 3: using type form, which you know, a freely available tool
Speaker 3: equivalent to sort of survey Monkey, and then we use
Speaker 3: this open source package called r which I'm sure a
Speaker 3: lot of psychologists in the audience may be familiar with.
Speaker 3: It's a statistical analysis package. So we produced various different
Speaker 3: analyzes of the data we've collected, and then we packaged
Speaker 3: them up into a PDF file, which ultimately was paper
Speaker 3: right print out, and then we'd go to these companies
Speaker 3: and we literally go with the printer out and say,
Speaker 3: you know, is this useful? Do you find this few
Speaker 3: of the data interesting? You know what's good, what's bad?
Speaker 3: What would you like to see? And that led to
Speaker 3: a sort of very rapid iteration of prototyping, whereby we
Speaker 3: could go through effectively like seventy versions of the initial
Speaker 3: peak on product, but without actually having to code any
Speaker 3: of it. And then we when we settled on something
Speaker 3: that was working and customers were like, oh, there's genuinely
Speaker 3: quite good insights here. At some point we took the
Speaker 3: sort of difficult decisions, right, it's now time to build
Speaker 3: this into software, and that's kind of when the first
Speaker 3: version of the dashboard came out.
Speaker 1: Now, a benefit that you offer staff is unlimited paid leave.
Speaker 1: That is something that you're still doing.
Speaker 3: Correct, So we've been acquired by Workday, so I think
Speaker 3: it's available in some markets now and not in others.
Speaker 4: So there is a you know, various you know, international
Speaker 4: rules around this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly something that we tried it Inventium a
Speaker 1: few years ago.
Speaker 2: We ran it for about three.
Speaker 1: And a half years old up and I think, and
Speaker 1: you'll leave or you know, in terms of how much
Speaker 1: leave people were taking in Australia, the mandated required and
Speaker 1: your leave is four weeks, we averaged about five and
Speaker 1: a half after we did unlimited leave. But then we
Speaker 1: sort of we ran into a few issues about three
Speaker 1: and a half years in where you know, we got
Speaker 1: so much media coverage in Australia for the policy that
Speaker 1: people started to listen to the messages around the policy
Speaker 1: that the media was saying, rather than the original intent
Speaker 1: was just take enough leave so that you feel balanced,
Speaker 1: like you're leading a balanced life.
Speaker 2: As opposed to just take lots of leave.
Speaker 1: So we ended up replacing that with a four day week,
Speaker 1: which we've been doing now for a year.
Speaker 2: But I'm personally interested, how did.
Speaker 1: You use unlimited leave, Like what's your approach to taking holidays?
Speaker 3: So me personally, I mean it was it's an interesting
Speaker 3: challenge actually, you know, particularly as the CEO of a company.
Speaker 3: I initially, you know, used it judiciously and then it
Speaker 3: became harder and harder to take enough holiday as the
Speaker 3: company got bigger, and I think but ultimately, like, I
Speaker 3: don't think anybody works effectively if they're burnt out or
Speaker 3: haven't taken enough leave. So it's really really something I
Speaker 3: try and do. And for me, it was more around,
Speaker 3: you know, making sure you had a holiday at a
Speaker 3: frequent enough interval to sort of recharge, even if it's
Speaker 3: not such a long time. And I think there's sort
Speaker 3: of the comfort of unlimitedly is you don't have that
Speaker 3: thought in the back of your mind of like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: if I do this, then I won't be able to
Speaker 3: you know what, if I feel in three months.
Speaker 4: Time, I won't have an option.
Speaker 3: I don't think we want any employees to feel like that, right,
Speaker 3: So that's completely counterproductive. You don't want people to be
Speaker 3: thinking about leave like that. So for me, it's a
Speaker 3: great policy. And yeah, I think you have to ignore
Speaker 3: the sort of media hyperpoil around unlimited leave and do
Speaker 3: your own kind of education internally around how.
Speaker 4: You expect, why, why you're doing something right.
Speaker 3: I think I think that's the important right employees, it's
Speaker 3: it's kind of useless to build. You can build the
Speaker 3: best benefits package in the world, but if you don't
Speaker 3: sort of also do the education piece around why in
Speaker 3: your company you've put this in not generally then then
Speaker 3: I don't often things, I don't these think these things
Speaker 3: land in the right way. So I think that's it's
Speaker 3: something definitely we learn over time. You know that people
Speaker 3: you know, didn't necessarily understand all of the benefits package,
Speaker 3: and people don't necessarily understand stock options or you know,
Speaker 3: all of these other these great things, So you have
Speaker 3: to also do a lot of work in applying them
Speaker 3: and educating them as to how they apply in the
Speaker 3: in the different regional markets. Yes, how are you fanning
Speaker 3: the four day work work week working out?
Speaker 1: Then we have loved the four day week, so we
Speaker 1: all take Fridays off and we've been running it for
Speaker 1: a year now.
Speaker 2: So we ran a six.
Speaker 1: Month experiment early on, and certainly we used pecon actually
Speaker 1: to track some of the metrics that we were hypothesizing around,
Speaker 1: you know, such as engagement. So with engagement, for example,
Speaker 1: we're already pretty high. We were in the top ten
Speaker 1: percent or ninetieth percentile for our industry of management consulting.
Speaker 1: By the end of the six months, we were in
Speaker 1: the top one percent. So we were wrapped about that. Yes,
Speaker 1: productivity increased by twenty six percent over that period, which
Speaker 1: which we were actually really impressed with because a lot
Speaker 1: of the work that we do with inventing is training
Speaker 1: people and how to work more productively, so we were
Speaker 1: already applying a lot of those strategies. And then we
Speaker 1: also tracked things like collaboration because we were worried that,
Speaker 1: you know, if people are working less like four normal days,
Speaker 1: would they be less open to collaboration because there may
Speaker 1: be more self focus trying to get all their work done.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: Operation was maintained and stress levels, given that for the
Speaker 1: last half of last year a lot of the team
Speaker 1: were locked down in Melbourne, stress levels reduced by about
Speaker 1: eighteen percent, which was also pretty good in amongst you know,
Speaker 1: the landscape of what was happening outside of Inventium.
Speaker 3: That sounds resoundingly successful and you know great that you
Speaker 3: could measure all that with.
Speaker 2: Pecon, I know exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a bit about pecon and for listeners
Speaker 1: are not familiar with pekon, which I assume is quite
Speaker 1: a lot of people, can you just describe what pecon is?
Speaker 2: Can you paint a bit of a picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Peakon is effectively a continuous listening platform allows you
Speaker 3: to really get the pulse of what's happening with your employees.
Speaker 3: And then we use machine learning, so we apply that
Speaker 3: to generate insights and we can deliver those insights to
Speaker 3: anyone who manages people in your organization, you know, on
Speaker 3: a continuous basis and really really boil it down to
Speaker 3: what are the top three things that I should be
Speaker 3: working on to approve engagement on my team. But you
Speaker 3: can also we'll show you like kind of what contributes
Speaker 3: to that as well, so we'll look at all of
Speaker 3: the different factors around what motivates people to come to work,
Speaker 3: and then you can use this also to make predictive insights.
Speaker 3: So on a macro level, you can look at what's
Speaker 3: the attrition risk in my organization and if it's high
Speaker 3: in specific teams or segments, then you can say, well,
Speaker 3: what can I do to reduce this.
Speaker 4: We also look at.
Speaker 3: Diversity and inclusion so how you can build a more
Speaker 3: diverse and inclusive workforce. And we've also got a continuous
Speaker 3: performance management product called grow, which is really around getting
Speaker 3: you know, continue to employee development more than anything really
Speaker 3: about getting a sort of picture of different areas where
Speaker 3: you want to develop and kind of what the perception
Speaker 3: of your peers, managers, subordinates is of you in those areas,
Speaker 3: and that's not anonymous. So yeah, three different products and
Speaker 3: in use fire about twelve hundred companies worldwide.
Speaker 2: Including Inventium.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yes, so we've been using peicon for I'd say
Speaker 1: at least a couple of you is and we just
Speaker 1: love it. So you know, every month we're in there
Speaker 1: looking at the dashboard and certainly alloys OKRs in terms
Speaker 1: of our goal setting process. And quite a few people
Speaker 1: in the business have okayrs linked to data that comes
Speaker 1: out of pecon.
Speaker 2: So it's high stakes.
Speaker 1: Now I want to know how how does pecon use
Speaker 1: pecon Like, what is your process for using all this
Speaker 1: data and getting the most out of it.
Speaker 3: We've used peak on data, I would say, to inform
Speaker 3: most major company decisions ever since we formed the company.
Speaker 3: And I think it's really a this is a different
Speaker 3: and almost almost like a management superpower.
Speaker 4: I would say, you know, you know, if you get
Speaker 4: we run weekly.
Speaker 3: I don't know about you and Mantha, but it really
Speaker 3: provides a way that you can get real time feedback
Speaker 3: on the way that you manage the company and particularly
Speaker 3: around you know, major events or comms or you know,
Speaker 3: when you launch initiatives or going through sort of big
Speaker 3: transformations and you can get pulse of like how is
Speaker 3: this actually landing with people? So there have been you know,
Speaker 3: it's been a learning journey for me as a first
Speaker 3: time CEO. You know where I've I've stood up at
Speaker 3: a company all hands meeting and said, you know, expressed
Speaker 3: a point in a certain way, and then I've got,
Speaker 3: you know, some pretty pointed feedback and peak on there
Speaker 3: a couple of days later, and I think it really
Speaker 3: opens up your eyes to well ultimately would have been
Speaker 3: a blind spot for you, and enables you to do
Speaker 3: things differently, to acknowledge, you know, where things haven't gone
Speaker 3: so well and and course correct as you.
Speaker 4: Go, which you know you don't you don't normally get
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 3: And I you know, I give the example of the
Speaker 3: salary model before, but there have been countless incidences I
Speaker 3: think where you know, we've really been able to pinpoint problems,
Speaker 3: and particularly as your company gets to multi office or
Speaker 3: multi country, you know, how do you really know what's
Speaker 3: going on in any of those offices. With peakon, you
Speaker 3: do know what's going on and you have a real
Speaker 3: time view of it.
Speaker 1: We will be back shortly with Phil hearing about how
Speaker 1: he used his partner's documentary filmmaking skills to boost employee
Speaker 1: engagement and also how Phil has reduced virtual meetings at Pecon. Now,
Speaker 1: if you would like to hear more productivity content, you
Speaker 1: might want to follow me on some of the social
Speaker 1: media channels that I'm active on. You can find me
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn just search for my name Amantha Imba, and
Speaker 1: also at Twitter at Amantha.
Speaker 2: And also I am now.
Speaker 1: A little bit more active on Instagram and you can
Speaker 1: find me there at Amantha. I Are there any other
Speaker 1: examples you can share where say you've launched an initiative
Speaker 1: or put out some comms and you've used that data
Speaker 1: to cause correct or you know, the data showed you
Speaker 1: something that was really surprising and then you had to
Speaker 1: act on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've got loads of great examples, particularly
Speaker 3: in the customer base. You know, we we peakle. Customers
Speaker 3: are using it for a lot of different use cases.
Speaker 3: I think one that really springs to mind in my
Speaker 3: mind is kind of in a retail setting. One of
Speaker 3: our one of our clients wanted to study what would
Speaker 3: be the effect of giving of paying people the living wage.
Speaker 4: Rather than the minimum wage.
Speaker 3: Uh. And you know, they actually set up a control
Speaker 3: group of stores and then kind of you know, did
Speaker 3: you know, did a pay differential between those two control groups,
Speaker 3: and they saw that not only did engagement increase in
Speaker 3: in the sort of group that got the pay rise,
Speaker 3: but it also led to better customer satisfaction and ultimately
Speaker 3: to better store profitability. And therefore, you know, you could
Speaker 3: make the business case for doing that on our on
Speaker 3: a on a bigger scale. So I think, you know,
Speaker 3: we've we've also seen examples of increased engagement link to
Speaker 3: reduction in safety incidences in the kind of a you know,
Speaker 3: industrial setting. So there's all sorts of of great outcomes
Speaker 3: that I think you and measure and I think I
Speaker 3: think obviously in Mentor you kind of proved it with
Speaker 3: your you know, your four day work week leading to
Speaker 3: twenty six percent better productivity, which is an astounding result.
Speaker 1: Now I'd love to know what sort of things you
Speaker 1: do at pecon to maximize employee engagement.
Speaker 3: I think that it really starts with the kind of
Speaker 3: values in the mission of the organization, right, I think ultimately,
Speaker 3: you know, employee engagement isn't around sort of fads or
Speaker 3: or you know, sort of perks, even it's really around you,
Speaker 3: do you find true meaning in your job? And you
Speaker 3: know that has to be true of sustained long period
Speaker 3: of time. And I think you know that the sort
Speaker 3: of you know, really embedding kind of how how you
Speaker 3: work and why you come to work into the overall
Speaker 3: sort of company rhythm and sort of calling that out
Speaker 3: and you know, in terms of what are great examples
Speaker 3: of how we've improved the working life of employees. So
Speaker 3: you know, in our monthly all hands, you know, we
Speaker 3: always start start with the mission and we talk about,
Speaker 3: you know, examples, particularly in our Customer Success team of
Speaker 3: great initiatives where we've seen customers change things for the
Speaker 3: better in their organizations because of Peak on data. And
Speaker 3: I think that's really why people come to work at PEACON.
Speaker 1: Now, I know you've done some fun stuff with your
Speaker 1: partner who's a documentary filmmaker, to do some interesting things
Speaker 1: around engagement. Can you share some of the things you've
Speaker 1: done there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, we were scratching our heads a little bit
Speaker 3: when as I guess most companies where when we got
Speaker 3: through thrown into the first lockdown. So one of the
Speaker 3: I think genius ideas we came up was twenty six
Speaker 3: hours Zoomathon, which was kind of modeled on the old
Speaker 3: charity telethons that don't really had them in Australia, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was a big thing in the UK right where
Speaker 3: you would have these huge television programs around comic relief
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. So we said to all employees
Speaker 3: is right, everyone can who wants to you can sign up.
Speaker 3: You get thirty minutes live on Zoom broadcasting to the
Speaker 3: whole company. We're going to run it for twenty six
Speaker 3: hours and you can do whatever you want. So I
Speaker 3: was sort of scratching my head and I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: So one of my passions is is wildlife photography, and
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, my partners a sort of documentary filmmaker
Speaker 3: in the environmental sphere. So I managed to rig up
Speaker 3: this live broadcast down the camera thing where I went
Speaker 3: out into the field at dusk and it all sort
Speaker 3: of came together at the last minute and I sort
Speaker 3: of connected this like HDMI capture thing to my phone
Speaker 3: and then broadcast back to the company and I filmed
Speaker 3: some munt jack deer and some hairs.
Speaker 4: In a field in Norfolk down down the camera.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of it was quite stressful because I
Speaker 3: sort of had to do the commentary and the filming
Speaker 3: all at the same time, which is now I realized
Speaker 3: how David Atenborough feels.
Speaker 1: That's awesome if we have virtual meetings in general, because
Speaker 1: I imagine you must have done so much of your
Speaker 1: work via virtual meetings, zoom, whatever you're using, Like, what
Speaker 1: have been some of the strategies that you have used
Speaker 1: to make virtual meetings like suck a little bit less?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, try try and reduce them, I would say.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the first principle is like can
Speaker 3: this thing be done asynchronously? I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people sort of, you know, the meeting is their first tool,
Speaker 3: and I you know, I think we have to get
Speaker 3: out of that. And it's fine if you're in the
Speaker 3: same time zone or a fine ish, but ultimately if
Speaker 3: you're not, and you know, we work across the globe,
Speaker 3: it's you know, there are only small hours of overlap.
Speaker 4: You know, this is one of.
Speaker 3: The ones with the ash Pacific region, but you know,
Speaker 3: in the evening in Europe, like we're talking to California,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, the more of that people do,
Speaker 3: like the lesson goes to get.
Speaker 4: We've you know, lent on a collaboration tools a lot.
Speaker 3: I think one of the big standouts for me is
Speaker 3: a is a tool called Mirro, which is effectively a
Speaker 3: collaborative whiteboarding tool. I don't know if you've ever used it, Yes,
Speaker 3: absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2: How do you use miro?
Speaker 4: So we use it a lot.
Speaker 3: For doing you know, like the kind of meeting that
Speaker 3: would be like a strategy off site or you know,
Speaker 3: you know those kind of things where everybody's contributing a
Speaker 3: lot of ideas and putting them on a page and
Speaker 3: we're trying to organize them and that that really allows
Speaker 3: that process to run over multiple days, I think, and
Speaker 3: people to sort of do that work asynchronously and then
Speaker 3: come back together. And I've I've found it to be
Speaker 3: a really good, I don't know, a really good implementation
Speaker 3: of that, So would would recommend it.
Speaker 1: When you're setting meetings, Phil, how do you decide whether
Speaker 1: something is worthy of a meeting or whether it can
Speaker 1: just be an email or you know, done in some
Speaker 1: other asynchronous fashion.
Speaker 3: I think it's relative to the level of discussion that
Speaker 3: you really want to have around it. I mean, you
Speaker 3: think you need people to feel included, right or to
Speaker 3: be included not feel included. So I think it's getting
Speaker 3: the right standing meetings in place, you know, and making
Speaker 3: sure that you have a good structure and the agenda
Speaker 3: has contributed before and you have a plan for what's
Speaker 3: coming up so that everyone can get their stuff on there,
Speaker 3: but not creating you know, a ton of ad hoc
Speaker 3: you know, in addition to that, unless it's strictly necessary,
Speaker 3: and I think that that can be tricky. But I
Speaker 3: think if you start to talk about this at a
Speaker 3: senior level in the company, you sort of have to
Speaker 3: practice what you preach, right and you know, really let
Speaker 3: everybody know that that's something that you know, as a leader,
Speaker 3: you're trying to actively reduce and try and trying to
Speaker 3: make more time. I think you know when you may
Speaker 3: have you've obviously kind of taken this to the extreme
Speaker 3: with a day a week off, but we're also you know,
Speaker 3: having no meeting Wednesdays, for instance, So just giving people
Speaker 3: a day where everybody's not going to have meetings so
Speaker 3: that you can you can clete your calendar and get
Speaker 3: some more desk work or bookbook done.
Speaker 4: Is that's that's quite effective too.
Speaker 1: What's been the impact of no meeting Wednesdays?
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of one of the nice things around.
Speaker 3: So there's advantage and disadvantages to working with California, but
Speaker 3: one of the nice things is the mornings are free.
Speaker 3: So I think it it just gives you know, people,
Speaker 3: I think context switching is extremely expensive, right, and I
Speaker 3: think it really matters like where you put the meetings
Speaker 3: in the week.
Speaker 4: So you know, whether if people.
Speaker 3: Have twenty hours of meetings but they're they're dotted around
Speaker 3: like every other hour, then they're probably going to be
Speaker 3: half as productive as if you actually organize that. So
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, particularly true in jobs where
Speaker 3: you have some you know, complex development work to do
Speaker 3: or product ideation or those things. It's it's quite hard
Speaker 3: to switch into a mode where you're kind of in
Speaker 3: a flow and then then switch out of it to
Speaker 3: a completely different topic. So I think the impact really
Speaker 3: is is a better quality of work when you're you
Speaker 3: know you're in that zone.
Speaker 1: Do you have like a rhythm in terms of how
Speaker 1: you organize your.
Speaker 3: Wakes, so I tend to do my one on one
Speaker 3: in the mornings with Europe.
Speaker 4: Then I have I have a.
Speaker 3: You know, two teams really, which is the peak On
Speaker 3: management team, so we meet once a week. I also
Speaker 3: have the office the CERCHA team in workday. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a peak on is like one of the four
Speaker 3: pillars in that. So we meet on Mondays and then
Speaker 3: try and you know, keep keep the middle of the
Speaker 3: day free for customer stuff that comes up, so you know,
Speaker 3: kind of have a fairly regular schedule and enough. I
Speaker 3: think I try and keep like enough free time, like
Speaker 3: thirty percent every week that you can keep on top
Speaker 3: of everything else. And I think that's obviously sometimes easier
Speaker 3: said than done, but that's that works.
Speaker 4: For me and it's pretty pretty simple to do.
Speaker 3: But then you know, I also do have an EA Laura,
Speaker 3: who makes my life a lot easier.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: So you keep thirty percent free, how do you do that?
Speaker 4: How do that just just really by blocking time?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, again, the principle of transparency worked
Speaker 3: really well as Peacon, so we we always had open
Speaker 3: calendars as well, which I found from a lot of
Speaker 3: customers they find that quite shocking. Too, but we were
Speaker 3: always like you know it really, I think it helps
Speaker 3: people reason around you know, is this thing that I'm
Speaker 3: trying to put in your calendar more important than you know,
Speaker 3: this other stuff? Or can I be more thoughtful around
Speaker 3: where I'm going to put this meeting given the other
Speaker 3: stuff that I can see that you're doing, as in
Speaker 3: you might need some prep time before, you know, an
Speaker 3: important podcast interview with.
Speaker 4: Amantha or what have you.
Speaker 3: And I think when you move into a world where
Speaker 3: you have private calendars, all of that thoughtfulness around around
Speaker 3: you know what you know people people could could have have,
Speaker 3: it just goes away, right because I've got no idea
Speaker 3: what you're doing. So I think as much as possible,
Speaker 3: I tried to give people access to my schedule at
Speaker 3: least so they can they can.
Speaker 4: Do that now.
Speaker 1: I imagine that over the course of your career you
Speaker 1: would have received a lot of.
Speaker 2: Advice, some good, so bad.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know, like, what are some pieces of advice,
Speaker 1: maybe one or two things that have served you really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, when you look back at
Speaker 3: why pecon has been successful, I think it's really around
Speaker 3: trying to think about, you know, what are the mega
Speaker 3: trends here that are going to be different in you know,
Speaker 3: three to five years time. And I think to do that,
Speaker 3: you sort of it's good to be interested in quite
Speaker 3: a lot of different domains. And I think we certainly
Speaker 3: applied what was happening in the you know, domain of
Speaker 3: the customer, you know, around customer experience, customer analytics real
Speaker 3: time to then what might happen to the management of
Speaker 3: employees with the you know, I guess you look back
Speaker 3: at it ur fairly obvious extrapolation that you know, to
Speaker 3: have a great customer experience, you need to have a
Speaker 3: great employee experience. But then we were like, well, surely,
Speaker 3: if people are the most important thing in your business,
Speaker 3: and you know, the old Jerry Sanders adage profits and
Speaker 3: profits will follow, then why isn't there the same sort
Speaker 3: of real time data driven approach to managing and retaining
Speaker 3: your best people. And I think that, you know, the
Speaker 3: more generalized insight there is that you know, by having
Speaker 3: a having a doing quite a bit of reading around
Speaker 3: lots of different domains and you know, not necessarily having
Speaker 3: any sacred cows around the ways things should be done,
Speaker 3: then you can you can create yourself an advantage. And
Speaker 3: I think the fact that we didn't really have any
Speaker 3: domain expertise meant that many of the things we did
Speaker 3: at the start, which were sort of heretical, you know,
Speaker 3: like you were you can only run weekly and it's
Speaker 3: only our ten questions and that's.
Speaker 4: It, and that's the only choice. You know, many many
Speaker 4: people said, well, okay, well we won't use peak on.
Speaker 3: But but then the companies that did saw some great
Speaker 3: advantages and you know, we managed to build on that.
Speaker 3: So I think you can carve yourself a niche in
Speaker 3: that way, and that's been that served as well.
Speaker 2: What about bad advice?
Speaker 1: Can you think of any advice you've been given that
Speaker 1: it was just terrible and they did not save you.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there's a you know, coming from the startup, Well,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of celebration around fundraising and you know,
Speaker 3: raising money and huge rounds and you know, that's just
Speaker 3: kind of accelerated. And I think we always saw it
Speaker 3: as well. It wasn't really something to celebrate. You're just
Speaker 3: giving away more shares in your company. So we never
Speaker 3: did a party around that or you know, really really
Speaker 3: made a big thing about it. I think we, you know,
Speaker 3: really tried to focus on creating a sustainable business, and
Speaker 3: I think maybe another piece of bad advice would really
Speaker 3: be carrying too much around what the competitors are doing.
Speaker 3: I think that you know, this is quite nuanced, so
Speaker 3: I think you probably should care about what they're doing
Speaker 3: in a sort of in the go to market area.
Speaker 3: But I think in the product area, you know, you
Speaker 3: know hardly at all. In many ways, you know, just
Speaker 3: blindly copying kind of other companies. I think it's terrible
Speaker 3: advice because you don't really know what's working and what's
Speaker 3: not working for them.
Speaker 1: Now, my final question for you, Phil, for people that
Speaker 1: want to connect with you and try out pecon, what
Speaker 1: is the best way that people can do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, if you want to connect with me, then
Speaker 3: I'm on LinkedIn or Phil at pecon dot com. I
Speaker 3: would be happy to hear from any of your listeners
Speaker 3: who want to learn a bit more about pecon, and yeah,
Speaker 3: please get in touch.
Speaker 1: Amazing, fantastic, Well, Phil, it has been a pleasure talking
Speaker 1: to you and an apsolute pleasure using pecon for the
Speaker 1: last few years as well.
Speaker 2: So thank you for creating such an awesome product.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot for having me on the podcast a month,
Speaker 3: and thanks a lot for using Peacon.
Speaker 4: It's been great.
Speaker 1: That is it for today. I hope you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: chat with Phil and he's got your thinking about employee engagement,
Speaker 1: maybe in some different ways. And if you are not
Speaker 1: a follower or subscriber of How I Work, now might
Speaker 1: be the day to hit follow or subscribe wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast from. I've got some amazing guests
Speaker 1: coming up in the next few weeks, including author Sally Hepworth,
Speaker 1: who has a bunch of fascinating productivity tips that she
Speaker 1: does and uses in her own life, and also Phil Livin,
Speaker 1: who is the co founder of ever note software that
Speaker 1: I rely on multiple.
Speaker 2: Times a day.
Speaker 1: How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support
Speaker 1: from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was
Speaker 1: Jenna Koda, and thank you to Mattin Nimber who does
Speaker 1: the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound awesome.
Speaker 2: See you next time.