So for those of you who haven't met, oh, there we go being recorded. And for those who haven't met before, my name is Craig McCoy. I'm the chair London HR connection, which has a role have had for the last eight years or so. I'm also senior HR director with over 30 years experience in the profession, and my fellow of the CIPD. I myself have held 16 HR director roles in different capacities, both as a permanent as an interim and I'm currently the interim HR director at John Ambulance. A few words about London HR connection, maybe Denise if you can share the screen. We're a long established professional networking group for everyone with an interest in the world of HR. originally established in the 1980s, and origins within the CIPD and remained affiliated to the CIPD. However, we've got independent board of nine senior professionals. In normal times before pandemic, remember that it's all coming back soon, we were very much based on live events, with great speakers and great networking opportunities that is all coming back. So watch this space we are starting from May onwards. So at this point, I'll introduce our speakers. So very pleased today to welcome our speakers from Black Isle are our sponsors for today. Firstly, Jeremy Campbell is the chief executive and one of the creators of the big approach and nudge technology. And Jeremy is joined today by Jeff Wheeldon, Jeff, who's the group head of sales and strategic alliances at leading IT services provider VCG. And finally, by Atholl Duncan, who is his executive coach, board advisor, and author of books, including leaders in lockdown, which is a great book providing very rich insights into how the world of business is changing, post COVID. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to us all who'll be chairing our webinar today, over to you Atholl.
Thanks very much, Craig. And it's great to see so many of you on the call. And let me explain just a little bit of the background about where we got to where we are today, with nudge technology, and with the big approach. My colleague, Jeremy Campbell, who will be joining us in a minute is having a little technical issue, but getting in, he has been working on this theory for a very long time. I myself really got very engaged with this during COVID. Because what we did at Black Isle group was we launched a project, which was called leaders in lockdown, and ended up in this book. And some of you may have heard me talking about this book before. So we followed 28 global business leaders through COVID, to see really how they, how they led through the crisis and how they thought the world was going to change. And we got to this moment where we are now where people are dealing with more change at a greater pace than ever before. And we came to question, how do we do change? And is it time to do change in a different way? So we work throughout COVID, on the big approach, we worked on the nudge theory, and we're going to explain a little bit about that to you today. But the first question that I want to ask you all is of all the changes that we did in all your businesses through COVID. Most of those changes we could have done without COVID. And what does that say about us as change leaders and the way that we've done change in the past. So what I want to do is introduce Jeff Wheeldon, who is a client of black ale group. And Jeff works for the Managed Services Technology Business VCG. And he has been using the big approach. And he's been using the nudge technology in action. So he's a living case study of how this works. So first of all, Jeff, I'm wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about your business VCG because there were there were there were particular issues that you were dealing with in the business, Denise I think you're maybe just coming through there on the on the same. There was there was ridiculous stuff that would give us a little bit of the background of that, Jeff.
Yeah, absolutely and thanks for the opportunity to, to work with you and share with you today the real life experience of working with Jeremy and the team. It's, as you say, we've been challenged over the last couple of years as individuals as businesses, and I think some of the changes we've put in place probably we could have driven if we'd have been that thought leadership but it's been sort of compounded driven through work through the COVID. And locked down. So I think from our side, when we're a technology company, we work across multiple vertical markets, different types of business, the one constant within our organization is we're all about people, which I think is why working today, with the London, HR Connect is a great opportunity to share our story. You know, we pride ourselves on our people in the business, we pride ourselves on the culture and the DNA of the organization. But we were two businesses coming together to be one. We were different teams, we were different cultures. And we needed to establish that that single entity as an organization, so one of the one of the great conversations I had with, with Jeremy initially was how do we, how do we forge that, that understanding and purpose within the within the business, my responsibility is sales and marketing and alliances, but actually, they the makeup of my engaging with customers is across multiple parts of the business. So from my perspective, there were three teams within the business, two organizations and lockdown to deal with. And what we needed to do was find a method, a way of bringing those individuals bringing together the working behaviors, and actually establish one principle. And I think what really stood out for all of us was, you can't do one big change one big wholesale change, you have to build through small changes that people can consume, it has to be about changing behaviors, rather than it just being a forced change. So from my perspective, and from the various elements of the business I worked with, it was understanding what is a very simplistic approach to bringing together quite large challenges, which were around the different people, the cultures, the teams, but actually establishing that methodology that everybody could be part of and, and actually, everybody could contribute to as well, that was a major step.
So essentially, the way that this works is to take a big goal, and break it down into everyday actions, to create a 10 week sprint, and to enable everyone in the team to have a coach, and then to focus on these nudges on these things that people will do every day, and to use the technology to support that Jeff, to nudge people as individuals. And then when people are using the technology, it allows the leaders in the business to track the performance to see what is happening, particularly important in remote working. So for roughly was your big goal? And then how did you work with the team to break this down to these everyday nudges.
So we had, we had three, three goals that we set. The most important was to bring three teams together as one, rather than working as disparate groups of individuals. We had a goal, which was as you can imagine, in our industry was about growing revenues and growing the size of the organization in terms of the the customers we're working with. And the third goal was around training. Because actually, again, part of the focus was around that knowledge development within the various teams. So to put some put some clarity, I guess, context into a keep talking about three teams. It was a sales team, marketing team, and a pre sales team, all of whom have customer facing interactions. And as a business that listens to customers to understand what IT is going to do for their business. Those three entities are very key to the customer engagement. So three goals defined, I think what you said then is so critical in terms of daily activities. So this is not, we have a goal set. And we're going to do one great big step to get to the goal. Actually, it was about how do you break it down on a daily basis. So to give you an example, the change in terms of people's time management, which we all talk about, you know, we can't make time in a sense can't create extra time in our days, but we can manage time better. And actually, by using the nudge tool, which is which has been a real critical factor, I think in terms of prompting and probing people to remind themselves hence it's a nudge is every day do something different but do something different that contributes to the success of that end goal. So again, it's taking the big goal, breaking it down to small steps. To give you an example something really really simple, which became a very powerful output for one of the individuals and actually was was mirrored by many others. Even putting a nudge in to take 15 minutes away from your desk without your phone to take time to think about what's going on in the world around you not just be reactive to everything happening for that individual totally changed their ability to positively and mentally work in a hybrid environment. Because at this point in time, we've all become hybrid workers were in a different environment that being office based, but also led, coincidentally, to the individual turning up at a coffee shop, sitting having a coffee, and actually starting to talk to other people about what lines of business are in what challenges they're faced. So a 15 minute nudge to take time away from the desk, actually helped in terms of their well being, in terms, their mindset, but in terms of contributing to development of activities was a huge step in that individual's development.
And, Jeff, you've talked a bit about how this is performance coaching, rather than performance management. So maybe say a little bit about that. And and how did it help because everyone was remote. Because we've all had this issue that, you know, for most of two years, we've not been in the office, face to face or at the shoulder of our colleagues. So performance management, performance coaching, and then a little bit maybe about the remote work in the hybrid working.
The, the management versus coaching, I think is a critical shift. I think too often it's too easy to get down to almost a sort of the tactical, the measured conversations when you're working with people in the team on a one to one basis. Whereas so for me, coaching is about listening to the individuals, it's about understanding what's gone well, understanding how do we do more of that. Whereas if things haven't been great, either really poor week, well, what made that week poor, let's try to make sure we avoid that, that coaching shift in mindset and discussion forum with the team was was a massive movement for us. But even further than that, creating a peer coaching model. So actually, what we found was the team themselves started to work together in actually helping each other and they took leadership themselves. So they created drop in sessions, which was not something that I necessarily, you know, asked, mandated, or or put in place, the team themselves started to understand the importance of actually helping each other, coaching each other sharing, you know, good bad days, war stories, positive successes. So for me that that's been a shift actually, now that carries across the whole organization, that mindset of when you're working with people, the conversation has to not just be about a metric, it has to be about the individual's mindset where they're at keeping up positivity, and helping them overcome challenges. And that, of course, naturally fell into how do you help people who are working remotely, because some people take to it naturally, and find it a very positive and easy place to work. A lot of the team actually felt that ability to come together. And if you think about the, the nudge technology referred to this platform, it creates visibility as well. So everybody has visibility of what are other people doing? How are they achieving that success. So that community it built was very, very strong, especially in the example of those three teams that I was trying to pull together.
So there's a couple of things here, please put questions into the chat, fire your questions into the chat and Craig an myself or keep an eye out for them. For myself and for Jeff, and just a little bit of explanation further explanation that the nudge technology, the tech sits on your phone, and it nudges you across the day to carry out these particular actions that Jeff is talking about. And you click on that to say you've done the actions or you've not done the actions that then aggregates up so that the whole team can see what's going on. Then there's a coaching conversation every week, at the end of the week. We, you fill in your ask promptly to fill in a little bit, which gives feedback How are you feeling? Marking yourself out of a score of 10. And through that, there's far more engagement and particularly in this remote team situation, you're able to see people far more clearly. And so what, was the, it sounds a bit to me like the whole process The big approach was coalescing the team together was focusing the team together as well. Jeff and the other technology might have been prompting them. Yes, the coaching might have been helping them but it's this bringing together particulary when you had these two, two teams and these from two, what were previously two different companies.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when Gentleman I sat down and we took, we looked at what we were trying to achieve it the biggest success factor, which I'm proud to say we achieved and if anything, and it goes back to its behavioral change, this is not a mandated for the next 10 weeks you're going to do these activities. It's all about getting people to believe and, and adopt and change. And really bad analogy could be, you know, people, people who want to, you know, change their sort of diet, and they want to maybe lose a bit of weight after the Christmas time, they can do a quick short burst of not eating certain foods to get to a weight they want to be. And they think, right, I'm done and they go back to normal. This is all about changing your lifestyle habits, and I'm really proud of the team have absolutely taken on board. But you're right, it brought the team together centrally, they work together, they help each other. Even, even after the 10 week sprint, the first sprint, a lot of those activities have continued in I see it day in day out in the behaviors of the teams, on how they're working together, how they're helping each other how they're motivating each other. You know, and for me personally, there's a phrase which I kind of stuck in my head, which was timeout is time gained. I was terrible for being very busy and focused, a focused, busy person, but just very, very busy and not not often having time away from myself to be able to look at the bigger picture. And I think that for me was a big step. So the community building that the team build has been a huge step in moving.
So there's some some some questions here. So Rob says, Did you find a difference in engagement between extroverts and introverts?
Yeah, indeed. I mean, we had when you when you build the nudges, there's a plan, obviously, in terms of before you start doing the program. And we asked each individual to propose their own nudges. And then effectively, we sort of valued validated them as a, as a management team that wasn't to mandate what nudges would be. But what we wanted to do is keep everybody on the same sort of direction. And we did have to smile when one of the teams, the sort of techie end of the spectrum came up with about 500 nudges, for their sort of, I'm going to change my world. And you had the sales guys who kind of had one. So you know, introvert extrovert? Maybe not directly answering the question, but certainly extremes. It was about making sure they understood the common goal. And then making them understand how the nudge relates to the goal in relation to them as an individual.
And that great question from Ruth Lauren. Did you find that most people welcomed the nudge and did take action? Or did you find that took people time to embrace it?
Be very honest, a mixed bag. Again, there was people who immediately saw the value that it would help them by having that nudge, there was certainly some individuals in the team who were a little bit skeptical as to whether whether these that, you know, this change in behavior would, or the changing model would really help. But what I would say is very quickly, and I'm talking within days, everybody involved, immediately recognized, because one little element, again, back to that 15 minute example, one little element, changing someone's the dynamic of the day and how they're working. It just filtered through, because it was sharing it with each other.
So Jeff, last question for you. And then I'll bring a bring gentleman, because he'll be good at answering some of the other things that are going on in the chat here. Erm, what was the final result of it? Was there a tangible final result? You might not want to see a figure but where did it help you get to in the end?
So. So again, and I've probably, you know, probably sound like I'm laboring the point, but it was really critical. The biggest success, which we absolutely achieved, and is continuing is that teamwork, and I watched still people taking individual leadership and pulling together people, whether that's how do I use LinkedIn differently? Whether that's how do I create little drop in sessions to, you know, I'm having a bad week and the points of reference at a very measurable level. Quite simply, we absolutely smashed the targets out of the out of the park, as they say, what we set we thought was stretch goals, and we delivered well over and above them.
Okay, and they were mainly targets round aboat sales. Yeah, yeah. Well, you also had targets around about engagement presumably? Yeah,
absolutely. So the metrics in terms of, you know, growth in the revenues, we were seeing growth in the number of customers we're working with, they weren't they were key measurable metrics. And then obviously, the cultural change in the team change which is which is obviously very different. And again, if I'm if coming back to the point, if you said to somebody go work three teams together over 10 weeks then come and tell me if it worked at the end, not sure you'd be able to really defend the success or failure of it. With the nudge engagement with the reporting with the metrics and the feedback, you can genuinely hand on heart at the end of that time, confirm the success that we produced. So it's the reporting and the metrics that come with the whole cultural changes is a massive value.
Okay, Jeff, you have a little pause for breath there. And I'll nudge Jeremy now, because there's quite a good question. From Alistair, I kind of outline some of the basics of it. Jeremy, before Alistair is asking is, could you share a little bit more about the journey that employees receive with this nudge nudge technology? What's the frequency? What are the outcomes? Is it relying on social proof? If managers monitor nudges could this before we and there's a couple of questions about that, about whether this is seen as a form of control? Perceptions of Nicola Parkins is asking, is it perceptions of micromanagement or Big Brother? Maybe take us through a little bit about the journey first, and then we'll come to Big Brother in a minute.
Yeah, thanks. Well, let me just take that point, straightaway, they have the whole, the whole ethos of the big approach and nudge is the complete opposite of that, it's, it's definitely a lot more carrot than it is stick the whole, the whole idea is to help people perform within the workplace. It's not a performance management tool. And the way that we like to phrase it, it's more of a performance coaching tool. And, yes, there is performance outcomes, because business want outcomes, but it's very much about helping people be their best. And, of course, one thing is for certain that you can't change anybody. And if people don't want to change, they won't change. But we work on the premise that most people turn up to work to do a good job. And most people do want to do a good job, they just need more support. And one of the reasons we put the whole process together with my experiences of HR director, one of the things I witnessed a lot was poor conversations with managers and teams. And what the big approach does is it allows managers because we put in a process where in effect, it's it's a cascade of a coaching culture. So we are coaching, the, in this case, the leader of the of this division, which was Jeff, then coaching, Jeff's direct reports. And then we're coaching also, the salespeople, and the techy people as well. So it's, it's a cascade of coaching that goes throughout the whole of the organization, what we're doing is we're using the data. So we're asking three questions every at the end of reflection, which is what are the three things that went well, what are the three things that didn't go well? what's the one thing I can do to help you this next week, and that data is then used as the basis of a coaching conversation, rather than a performance conversation? So traditionally, and typically, what you'd have is a conversation, which is, what your numbers for this week? Or did you you know, in other areas of the business, did you achieve whatever your KPIs were? That's not that that's not a coaching conversation? It's not about getting the best out of people. What this process does, is it helps people have better conversations, because it's the start of a coaching conversation, because you have data that actually says, you know, I've had a really tough week, this happened that happened. So the conversation can be started with what the challenges are, so that you can address them. And then what we found with Jeff's businesses, that the level of the conversations with the managers and in Jeff's division was basically heightened a great deal. And a lot of the feedback we got from doing the peer coaching was, you know, I'm now having really good conversations with my line manager and also within with each other, I dont know if Jeff has covered this, but one of the great benefits of peer coaching is that collisive, you know that that cohesion of a team, and actually people working with each other.
And the other part of Alistairs question, there's a great question that we'll come to in a minute. But the other bit of Alistairs question there is what's the social proof? So I think that means what's the science behind that? And, you know, there is a bit topical at the moment with these books like atomic habits and tiny habits, which I presume are the same kind of principle that you break the big goal down to everyday actions. Yeah, do you want to say a little bit about the science behind that.
Yeah, so the principle is really very sound. And it's it is based in behavioral science, which is, it's not the knowledge that actually makes the changes, it's actually taking the action of the knowledge. So we live in a in a world that has more than enough knowledge. With Google with books with YouTube, you can get as much knowledge as you want. It's not it's not the knowledge. It's actually taking the action or the knowledge. And it's, it's very similar to the learning development world, which is, I go to a seminar, I go to a course. And I go away to a business school, I find I learn an enormous amount. But like most people, do you actually put into action. See, on a Monday morning, what are you going to do is the follow up for the learning. And this is basically a, a process that encourages people to take actions. And of course, as we all know that some of the greatest learnings we get from the mistakes we make, but of course, you can't make mistakes unless you're actually doing it. And what most people don't do is put the learning into action to make the mistakes and then learn from it and then go back.
So this is maybe a little bit for Jeff here. But but maybe Jeremy can come in as well. Sabina, his question was, what are the barriers that you face? How did you overcome those doubters?
Yeah, and they're always are some. And Jeremy probably can picture the scene when we first launched the event. For me, one of the biggest aspects was getting everybody involved early. So this was not presented to the teams as a sort of this is being done to you. But this is something we are doing together. Identify the purpose that we were all there to try and achieve in our day to day roles, but as a team. But I think that the launch that we did was so critical, which was getting everybody together physically getting all of the naysayers and all of the questions out on the table from day one, we had Andy Peter Smith, who's the CEO of VCG, on site as well. So if there were any questions that maybe even challenged the goals that we were setting, we had everybody there, and then on day one, and don't get me wrong through. That didn't mean that we left day one with everybody suddenly on the side. So a lot of it was then back to really what Jeremy and the whole process is about, which is, for me, it's about giving the control to the people as well. So the question about, is it Big Brother, we didn't really get that from anyone, because it's about giving the individuals control. They control what they do. We're trying to guide them trying to help them trying to get them to question themselves. And actually very quickly, even the, the individuals who sat there with their arms folded at launch day, very quickly started to see the value and the benefit it was bringing to them, especially because they were watching their colleagues and their peers actually start to develop and grow as individuals and perform. So there's, you know, there's that internal competition to a degree that also, I think, achieved, that real success, we probably ended up with 90 something percent of everybody on board there were there were individuals who probably still would never 100% there.
A question, Jeremy, maybe for you from Chris Thorne, and then Craig, you're looking awfully relaxed. So I'm gonna put you on the spot, in a second. And Chris Thorne says, we did a little bit about the process. But how do you go from defining the vision for the culture, identifying the desired behaviors, to then putting the behavior into nudges? And measuring the success?
Yeah that's a great question. Let me just finish off something that Jeff said as well, which I think is also really useful in terms of trying to face into the naysayers if you like other people who don't get one of the things that Jeff did brilliantly, which I think helped enormously was he sent out just a really straightforward comms every week as well of exactly what was going on. I think that helped enormously. And that was just that regular kind of update of what we're actually doing. So in fairness to his comms were very much here's what's going well, here's what not, here's our challenges. Here's the things that we need to do better with. And I think that helped a lot as well, because it's full transparency of the whole process. And we're sorry, what was the other the other question?
The other benefit was really moving from the culture to the behavior to the other keys. And then and there's two questions on measuring the success because Martin Kurtz, who asked me about running reports and analytics on the nudges,
yeah. Okay. So let me just try and deal with all of that so that the, the way that we do is a cascade So obviously, the the overall organization has a vision and objective and overall objective Jeff's business is growth, which is not unusual in terms of organizations and also bringing businesses to get to two businesses together. So the idea is that you use the overall goal vision of the organization. And that then gets cascaded down to the different divisions very similar. And that's what happens anyway, in all businesses. So those objectives on each one of the departments, then get cascaded down to the different departments. So if I'm in the finance area, then I have a set of objectives which link back into the overall goal, or vision of the organization. The idea then is is to do is to spend time workshop exactly what nudges or actions do, I have to take, in order to be able to play my role in my area of the business that would help deliver the objective for finance, which then overall links into the overall objective of the businessS. o there's a cascade of basically objectives, which is normal business practice.
But it must be really important to get the right nudges Jeremy, if you don't get the right nudges.
Absolutely. And a lot of time is spent on that as well. And I think, again, you know, full transparency, I think, Jeff, and I would say that it's one of the lessons learned for, you know, the next sprint that we do with them will be that we'll probably need to spend more time in sharpening those nudges because it got to probably week two, or three. And we, you know, we decided that some of the nudges just weren't in line with actually what we're trying to do. And that's the beauty of the system as well, because it's very agile, because in effect, it's getting away from what is what is the traditional, you know, the traditional kind of process of annual reviews, I know, it's gone to monthly reviews now, but what you're doing is you're being very agile on a weekly basis. If it's not working, then the whole idea is to make sure that you've got the right nudges that are going to deliver the the right metric, not just for the business, but for the individual. So if the actions they're taking the nudges they're taking or not getting getting the delivery, then then change them.
Okay, there's some great questions coming in here. But maybe tackle that one about the running reports and analytics, which Martin Kirk and some other people have referred to.
Yeah, so we've got a suite of reports, because it's the sort of part of the, it's all part of the technology that's accessible from to managers. It's like a hierarchy, as you'd expect in a traditional kind of HR system, I guess, where Jeff ultimate would have the overall view of, of the division, and then his direct reports would have views of their own teams. So the reporting, you can go basically at whatever hierarchy level you need to.
And that's realtime. You're viewing it in real time.
Yeah, you're real time. Obviously, people using the app, the app then links to the desktop, the desktop, has all the reporting on it. But the reporting is there. Again, I just need to stress that all the reporting is there to help support people, not to whip people. This is really important. It's not a performance management tool that says Atholl hasn't done his nudges so I'd better have a conversation with him. It's not about that it's about it's about what's happening with Atholl, I need to understand what and that's all of the coaching. That's all the peer coaching, it's all the one on one coaching that we do from an external point of view.
Jeremy, you take a little breather there, Craig, I'm just wondering, from what you've been listening to there, you know, you've been HR director and you know, inside, interim HR director, at the ambulances, just first thing for you is, how much change do you see people dealing with right at this juncture? And therefore, do you think we need to consider different ways of achieving behavioural change. Has COVID flushed that out?
Yeah, massively. Yeah, I mean, every organization is going through huge change at the moment, not just for the pandemic, but just through in terms of the way in which business is evolving. And I think there's a lot of challenge to existing systems of performance, performance management, performance measurement. And one of my questions really is are you seeing when you're deploying these tools and these practices, are you displacing traditional appraisal? Are you sitting alongside it, and it's supplementary to more established sort of ways of working with the first question. My second question is really about the role of HR within and do you find resistance for HR directors, HR teams to deploying it because it doesn't fit with their notion of traditional performance management. So maybe there's kind of two aspects really.
So Jeremy, you're not getting much of a break. Is it this blazing performance management? That's the first one. And then any resistance from HR?
I think the the short answer to both questions is no, Craig, you definitely can work alongside it.The other difference really, with this approach is that we were operating in short sprints. So we're operating in 10 to 12 weeks sprints. And the idea behind that is that in my experience, is traditional methods of performance management, is by the time you set the objectives in January, they're not necessarily going to be relevant in February, let alone half yearly. And then at the end of 12 months. By the end of 12 months, most people can't even remember what their objectives were, let alone whether or not they've hit them or not. And this is just a much more an agile way of being able to deal with trying to help people be better in the roles that they're doing. And no, we've had, I mean, we've been, it's been amazing in terms of the response that we've got people are really generally very interested because I think what most people are looking for is a way of supporting people in the workplace, and, generally getting closer to it. I think the data is really important. It's the combination, the combination of real live data, and the coaching conversations is really the thing that that kind of works. The technology is brilliant, because it nudges you. And obviously there's a behavioral change and science behind that. Because if you get a nudge, and if you if you're putting something if you're allocating a time and a date to do something more chance of actually taking the action on it, but it's actually the conversations. So this is not getting away from kind of big brother just using technology to kind of manage people, this is very much about using technology to help, but it's still down to the conversations still down to that one on one.
And resistance from HR. Not so far?
No
And do you have a view on a particular type of company that might be more likely to use this successfully? Because you're using tech here.
No, I mean, it can go into SMEs, it can go into to corporates, it can go across the border. It's really the it's more of the culture of the organization is it's are the organization serious about supporting their people? And you know, it's a bug, bear of mine, you know, most a lot of company reports have people are our greatest asset, but actually do people really support that? And my passion is trying to help people be perform the best they can in the workplace. And I genuinely believe that this process does that.
So just let me run through some of the other questions and comments that are in here. We might have picked up a few of them. I think Jade is asking here. How will it complement an organization's people strategy? I think you've probably answered that .Other initiatives that could be implemented refining conversations, career toolkits, skills to avoid micromanagement, we probably covered that. Wills got a good question here. Why 10 weeks?
Because we find that it's enough time in terms of forming the formation of habits not that there's no actual science. There's a lot of different signs out there that says it takes 21 days it takes a period of time but 10 weeks is enough to get a process of the momentum going. We also find that after four to five weeks you tend to get a dip and that actually happened with Jeff so people you know you set off on a bit like New Year's resolutions you set off, you know, with all great intentions and then there becomes a dip so what we tend to do is we did with with Jeff is we do a half stage kind of like relaunch and then we find 10 weeks is enough time for people to focus to get things you can do a lot in 10 weeks. A lot. You can delivr. Well, Jeff's the living proof.
Okay, let's just get some quick fire ones here. Resistance to surveillance technology. I think we've probably covered that. And what support do you provide to teams with regards to coaching skills? How do you help the teams coach?
So we do peer coaching. We've also we also did some some work on actually what is coaching. So we did a couple of workshops with Jeff and his direct reports on actually what is coaching. So coaching techniques, coaching skills, in order to be able to enable them to have better coaching conversations. And then I did a lot of peer coaching also with Jeffs direct reports, as well. And we did one on one coaching with one of Jeff's direct reports as well, so that they could use us as a kind of a way to say, Well, I'm having this conversation it hasn't gone, well. This is what I need to do, what would you advise? So we're there all the way to kind of to help and support the people who are coaching.
Okay, Nima asks, Is there a particular coaching model that you're using?
No, there isn't, there isn't a particular model
Okay. And what else was there? How'd you fit in Chris Thorn and I do fit in one to one our team coaching to support the nudges. Did everyone receive coaching?
Yeah, either one on one or peer coaching Atholl.
Yeah. Okay. So Jeff, you're, you're, if you're doing it again, or you presumably you are gonna do it again? And hopefully, you're gonna do it again, what what are the learnings? And how can you? How can you build in it? How can you get it into the DNA of the organization?
And I think the key learning, which we sort of touched on a little bit as around that, the people involvement in creation of the nudges, I think, if they're part of the creation, they're part of the outcome, the part of the success. So where we did try to start to create a guide around the nudges, I'd probably go back, so having more input at start. So I think that very quickly solidifies people's buy in because they can see actually I'm contributing, it doesn't mean we have to accept every note that people put forward because we end up with too many again, but I think that would be a key a key aspect. And I think can really just the continuation of the communication. I think the communication is so key. Again, the there's been a couple of questions around sort of Big Brother, that reporting, monitoring is it micromanagement. Actually, what I found was giving individuals the visibility of how they are doing against what they themselves are trying to achieve, is really powerful. So I will probably use that more than maybe I did the reflection that Jeremy touched on, I think it was really powerful to do that on a weekly basis and reflect on good, bad, ugly, and make it very, sort of very human very Jeff in the way that the communication was written as well. It wasn't a formal report that came out every week. There was there was humor in there, and you know, all the good sort of things. And so I think for me, using the data, probably a little bit more myself to just work with the teams and the upfront nudge creation, making sure we get a lockdown before launch. So we don't end up sort of drip feeding into the first week like we did.
Great. And Jeremy, how are you going to develop it from from here?
Yeah, we there's two ways we're still obviously developing the technology. The next bit, the way we're looking at our roadmap is the cascade so organizations can do a lot of the cascade themselves. Turning the if you like the technology into more of a kind of a SASS platform, still with a lot of a lot of support from black isle. And then we're also going to individual so if it was to be rolled out to a large organizations and thousands of people, then we're also going to make sure that the app is very focused upon individual requirements. So people could actually use it for their own personal nudges, without the company seeing it as well. So you could use it as a as a health and well being app as well. So that's the and then, you know, as we expand as we get more and more users and more and more people onto the platform, then we'll start looking at things like AI intelligence, the trends and all those all that good stuff Atholl. But that's the direct travel.
And the other question here is, How much does the technology rely on the coaching and the people? Because I think probably behind that is, can you just could you just have the technology? Will it work? Or will it fail? I mean, what is that combination between human interface and technology to get these results?
Yeah, I mean, the the short answer is no technology, you know, necessarily works on its own you you've got to especially with people there's still got to be people element, and there's still got to be some some form of, of people element. The technology is fantastic. But of course, it's enhanced by the quality of the conversations. And that's really what we're about. It's about the quality of the conversation that people have. And the technology is just the enabler. It enables us to have those conversations.
And Jeremy, you're a bit of the inventor of this. Okay, I know there, you're pulling lots of thoughts from lots of different people. And you invented it before COVID. And I was saying earlier that accelerated through COVID, because we thought there was much more of a need for that with remote teams and with the scale of change. Why did you invent it? How did it come about? How did this become your baby?
It's some of the reasons I've just said, my frustrations as an HRD was, you know, we've put on fantastic events, we've spent a lot of money on l&d would send people off to amazing business schools. But Monday morning came around and their inbox got full up, and that wouldn't take the action. So we wanted to put something into the business that basically would help people take action on the learning. That was one of the reasons which is, you know, we call it the learning stays in the room, it doesn't come out of the room. And that was one of the main reasons the other the other reason was a lot of the challenges in businesses is the is the lack of training that mid managers managers have in order to be able to have proper coaching, supportive conversations. And this basically gives you that and the reason why a lot of people don't is because they've not been trained on it, they don't know how to have that coaching conversation. And what Nudge does is it gives you real life data. And it means that you're very agile in the way that you can actually deal with things. So from a line managers point of view, you can see whether your team's not had a good week or not. And then that gives you the opportunity to actually go and do something about it, and try and help them help them why, what's the themes. And one of the things that also gave us in my previous businesses, gives you the it gives you the details of why or where the challenges are. So if one area of the business is all saying that there is a challenge with this, because we asked them, what's the one thing we can help you with, then you can then go after it. So it makes it much easier to then deal with actual business issues.
And then a final comment from from you, Jeff. And, you know, you've talked about to me personally, you've talked us a bit it was making it was making things doable was a nice phrase that you used, and you know, it changed the way that we work. What's your final reflection on it?
I think you you kind of touched on it a minute ago when you said I assume you'll be doing another sprint? Absolutely. You know, I'm not here as a kind of one time, it was great. Thanks very much the impact it had on the individuals on the team. And I'm sure if you spoke to the individuals themselves, you couldn't you couldn't change the team the way we did without that structure. And without, that people involvement. I think, again, the question that came up, could you have the tech on its own? Personally No, because I think actually the value is in how you then work with the expertise and the experience that the black isle group bring in an engagement. So you know, for me personally, having an app that just kind of pings you every now and then without understanding that the holistic approach I think wouldn't have worked. So yeah, final phrase from me, Jeremy, look forward to continuing to work with you and the team.
A happy customer. What a good way to end. Jeremy, there's one or two people have said, you know, can we see the tool? Can we see the interface? I can reveal now to everyone on the call that when you watch the 10 o'clock news, it's on the surface, it seems quite smooth. But underneath there's a lot of paddling, there's been a bit of paddling in the last hour withhe technology. So we can't show you the technology just now. But what do people want to do if they want to see the technology?
Well contact me I'm on LinkedIn, Jeremy Campbell, go to BlackIslegroup.com. This is our website that you can contact us through that very happy to set up demos, show people the tech show the capability of it. It's not just the tech the approach, we can talk through the approach and see if that's you know, specific, you know, that's the right thing to do for folks.
And your emails nice and easy, I think is jeremy@blackislegroup.com. Craig, thats us.
Very Good
Hopefully we've been able to plant some thoughts and some seeds, but I certainly think that you know, as we started the webinar, and we think we need to think differently about so many different things right at this moment coming out of COVID and how we maximize performance and how we coach our people is one of them.
Excellent. Yeah. Thank you very much really insightful. And yeah, I'd be keen to see the platform myself, actually. But yeah, I think we've got a lot of engagement on the chat and lots of questions coming through. So can I give a very big thanks to all three of you to Atholl, Jeremy, and Phil, a really good session this afternoon. So before we close, I wanted to mention our next webinar, which is on March 24. And the subject matter is establishing commercial credibility for next generation HR leaders. So it's all about HR capability, and profile and competence should be a great session. It's been run by two very experienced, established HR leaders, Tony Bainbridge and David Chapman, recently set up a new consultancy, called CEO whispering, which is all about the role of HR directors and advising the chief executives, and doing that effectively. So, a great session for both new and established HR directors. That's coming up on the 24th of March. And I hope that you can join us. And we're currently planning our first live events towards the end of May 1 Live Event post COVID. So watch this space and details will be coming out soon about that. But we will be continuing to offer in a hybrid fashion, both webinars and live events, like many organizations. So that's all for now. Thank you very much for joining, and I hope to see you all soon. Thank you. Bye