The Red Review - Leadership Development for Bidding People, with Nigel Thacker
In this episode, Jeremy talks to Nigel Thacker about the development of leaders of bid functions and in the bidding space.
Find Nigel Thacker on LinkedIn - Nigel Thacker
Transcript
[00:00.4]
I'm Jeremy Brim and welcome to the Red Review Podcast brought to you today by Growth Ignition, the Transformation Consulting and Enabling Tech business. All in the work winning space and the Bid Toolkit, our online bid process and guide. Hello and welcome to the Red Review Podcast with me, Jeremy Brim.
[00:21.4]
So the episodes are coming thick and fast. We've got two as a bit of a series with my friend Nigel. Hopefully you've listened to the episode, that's come out a week or two ago, that we did together and it positions this one nicely, around leadership.
[00:39.5]
So. Hello again, Nigel. Hi. Good to have you back, sir. Thank you for making the time. So, just for those who haven't listened to the other one, if you wouldn't mind just giving me a little bit of career overview, what you get up to these days and then we'll get into the subject of leadership of bid functions.
[00:55.4]
Yeah, sure. So I've been in bidding one way or another since about 1995, I think, long while. But, elements of that have been around training people, development and certainly the times I've been a bid director, you look at your team and you go, how do I develop that team?
[01:16.7]
And certainly that was the case for the last seven years when I was a bid director, development director. And now I'm doing two things. The rebid consultancy we spoke about and, I launched at the start of the year, A course on management leadership skills for bidders.
[01:37.5]
Very good. So, yeah, so the other episode was about rebidding and recaptcha, which was really interesting actually, on reflection. So do go and listen to that one too. But a subject that doesn't come up often enough and when it does could be covered better, I think.
[01:54.9]
And so it's a really interesting thing. I've watched you develop, Nigel, and so talk me through what sort of spurred you on to develop a course, and some IP in this space. I think it's two things. One is you're exactly right, it's an element of a growing profession that's not really spoken about.
[02:15.6]
But you look at the figures on management and leadership across organisations, across sectors, management is really important. It's a huge impact on how people perceive work, their experiences of good and bad managers, your own career development, all those sort of things and how effective you are.
[02:42.7]
You can have a lot of technical bid skills, but actually unless you're an effective manager, a lot of those are going to go to waste and your career is going to have A bit of a ceiling to it, because at some point you're going to stop managing bids and you're going to be managing people.
[03:01.9]
So that's a sort of general aspect, I think. Specifically my last job when I was developing director, I had a big team of 8 or 10. It varies at different times. And I was looking at how do I actually give them those management leadership skills. And some of it was coaching and mentoring.
[03:18.3]
But I was looking for a course, and there just wasn't anything that really dug into the bidding context. You could either send someone on a general management course, which is fine, they're great, but bringing that context back into bidding was quite difficult.
[03:36.8]
Or I could send them on the internal management course, but that wasn't really teaching them. I didn't want half a day on absence management for them, if you like. So it was, it was really. There's nothing out there that really fits what I think is going to develop my team to be better managers within the bidding context.
[04:03.7]
So when I finished that job, I thought, well, okay, let's do one. So I did very good. Well, thank you for putting it together because it's a really important area. It's often the bit of feedback on industry events from our professional, body or whatever, that there's not a lot for leaders, although they've been doing a bit more recently in the uk, human, centric leadership stuff, in terms of equipping you with the real pragmatic skills to lead a community of people in a bidding context, has been sorely missing and still continues to be really, I think.
[04:41.9]
And so what have your findings been? What are the key things that we would take away from it? Through the programme, I guess. I think it's. For me, it comes in at three different levels for bidding. I mean, right from the start of bidding, you're actually managing people, people that don't report to you as a bid writer, as a big coordinator, you're trying to get things done through people, you're trying to get SMEs to bring in the input you need.
[05:10.6]
You trying to get sales guys to give you the information about the customer you need. You're trying to get things done on time. So that is managing, really, it's not managing people that report to you, but the skills of negotiation, of delegating properly, of coaching all those sort of skill sets and processes and there are best practise processes for all those different things.
[05:38.3]
All those things are going to add to your ability to do stuff and to do your bit better. But they're things that people don't necessarily think about in terms of when they're developing their big skills. So that's that level.
[05:53.5]
I guess the main thing is your first job managing people, even if you don't necessarily recognise you doing that. So a lot of bid managers are, managing people to get the bid done rather than writing the bid themselves or doing those sort of things.
[06:13.9]
But a lot of bid managers don't actually recognise that that's what they're doing in terms of it's the people you're managing and how you manage them that is going to have as big an impact on your ability to win this bid as just managing the TAs. So looking at those skill sets around, how do I motivate this team?
[06:34.7]
How do I, make them feel psychologically safe, help them engage? All those sort of things are, added to all the negotiation, the coaching and the influencing, the communication skills, that you can build up and should do as a bid manager.
[06:53.0]
And those sort of things will help you win more bids, not just the process of writing or the process of storyboarding, although those are very important things. This is an add on to those sort of things. So that's also the point, I think, that people often don't recognise what sort of manager they are.
[07:17.9]
The people reporting to them often do. And, we've all had people we think are good managers or bad managers. I bet those bad managers don't think of themselves as bad managers. They're not bad people. No, they're not bad people.
[07:33.8]
Well, I'm one of those actually. So, I led quite a big team of people at Mace, and it was interesting. I could have done with going on your course. So it transpires, I'm really good at developing people and that's why I now have a capability training business, because I've realised I should focus on the stuff I'm good at.
[07:54.2]
What I'm not good at, is the HR bit. I want everyone to win. And actually, as we were kind of talking about before we came on Nigel, because bidding has not been and largely doesn't continue to be an intentional career path, there is a unusually high proportion of people that have fallen into it.
[08:16.0]
Very high. And therefore, as a result there's an unfortunately fairly high, proportionate, relatively speaking, proportion of people, who shouldn't be doing it, aren't very good at it, are in the wrong job, fallen into it. They get into it In a business that's bidding everything and treats it like an admin task and then have the CV to get a job in a high performing business and instantly out of their depth.
[08:39.9]
We had that a lot at Mace. And you know recruiting people into this game is therefore an incredibly big challenge. Really, really difficult challenge. And so quite quickly at Mace I real I could do the strategy stuff, I was really good at the managing the board and upward engagement stuff and I could train people, develop people, and come up with all the processes and stuff.
[09:05.5]
But the, the more human centric bit which APMP UK have been doing in really understanding the people and what makes them tick and getting the best out of them, and then the HR components of both performance management and recruitment selection, all of that kind of stuff I realised I wasn't very good at.
[09:27.0]
And so I got, I had two number twos at Mace. Al Gilbert, who's a sensational, one of the best bid writing people you'll ever work with, particularly in public sector staff, one Tottenham Stadium and all sorts. Incredible bidding guy who now leads the team, and rightly so because he is a very good line manager.
[09:45.8]
But particularly Jack Strickland, who's one of my best mates. He was an incredible. And manager person, manager of people. Really extremely thoughtful about their competencies, their development and strengths and weaknesses and how to get the best out of people.
[10:04.9]
And so those two ran interference with me until I realised that I should go and do something else really. But recognising that has been an interesting journey that when you look around at leaders, your next bit I guess is leaders.
[10:22.0]
In this game, very often they are bidding people that have been promoted because they're good at bidding, not necessarily managing particularly large groups of people. And so there is quite a gulf, a noticeable gulf between the people who are really good at that stuff, like Vicki Jackson at Capita now for instance, just awesome bidding person but also leader of people in this sport, versus people who are not.
[10:52.3]
So it's, it's, it's quite obvious in results and vibe and staff turnover and all of those sorts of things. Yeah, and, and you know, and recognising your own skills and weaknesses and bringing the team around you that have got the bits you haven't got if you like.
[11:12.6]
I mean that is part of good leadership. It's managing through people and recognising what you are good at and what you're not good at and if you recognise those things you can do exactly as you did bring on people who are good at those things as part of your team.
[11:30.9]
And the higher up you get, the more important that becomes. It's understanding people's strengths and weaknesses around management. I think the other thing that I see in bidding a bit is once you get to those leadership positions, exactly as you said, sometimes people are still bidders at heart, whereas actually the higher up you get, your skills in bidding actually become less important.
[12:02.0]
It's your skills in managing, influencing, and your whole perspective. So once you get to that more senior leadership position, you're actually thinking outside of the bid team itself and how you run the bid team.
[12:17.7]
You're still doing that, but you're thinking about those external influences on the bid team that come from different parts of the organisation or the culture of the organisation. The bid. No bid decisions that are being made elsewhere or the whole pipeline of things that are coming through to the bid team, or the budget that you get for the bid team.
[12:40.5]
All those different things that impact on the bid team that aren't directly to do with bid writing, bid process, but they're the things that have that biggest impact. Actually, your job as a leader at that top level is to be thinking outside. Yes. And influencing the culture and the environment around the bid team, to be able to empower that bid team to do the best it can do.
[13:06.8]
Whereas what I sometimes see is you've got leaders in bidding who are still very. It's about bidding, and encouraging those people to think more broadly.
[13:23.9]
I mean, a bit like you do with, the stuff you've been talking about recently on some of the. The LinkedIn stuff, in terms of you're going to get better outcomes from your bids, not just from doing good bids, but from your whole positioning and your.
[13:40.5]
And your, sort of your pipeline and your ideal customer and you can. All those things that lead into the bids, you get the environment in which you can do your bid. As you go up as a leader, they're the things you need to be more involved in, rather than just a focus on only bidding.
[14:03.0]
Yeah. Now you're bang on, Nigel. So, yeah, just for context, for people that haven't been stalked by all my LinkedIn stuff, we've had a campaign running for a few weeks on doubling the margins of business to business or business to government organisations, which we've done, which I've done six times now.
[14:22.3]
And you're bang on. Placing the bid function at the heart of the business as the growth engine room is a critical step in that, which is. And it's actually the video that will be out next week, no, tomorrow. There's a bidding one tomorrow, which has some of these elements in it.
[14:41.3]
But fundamentally you need to switch from being. Bidding should be, the last thing a business ever wants to do competitively. We should be looking to negotiate. Obviously the stuff on cam, capture cam, but appropriate business planning and targeting.
[14:59.5]
And most business leaders, as I did a post on this on Friday, I think, most business leaders, as in ops leaders, managing directors, chief execs, are not trained in this stuff. There's no course that you can go on in the world about how to grow a B2B.
[15:17.4]
B2G business, apart from my stuff. So there's not a single development programme. If you go on an mba, you do anything with the academics, they'll teach you about overall business strategy and they'll even sell you a very expensive key account management programme.
[15:34.0]
But the academics, you know, I teach at Cranfield, they bring me in because they know nothing about capture or bidding and particularly joining the dots through it. I did a big article for acam, the association of Key Account Management, last on exactly this, how you join the dots through the funnel. And so I think that's the great opportunity for big teams, you know, yes, we absolutely need to be elite in the end game.
[15:58.6]
If you do, when you do, obviously have to bid things competitively, our, bid functions need to be elite at doing that, putting the ball in the net. However, you probably should be bidding half as much and bidding to clients that you know, rather than strangers and all of that kind of funnel stuff.
[16:15.5]
Do some market research, understand where the money's going to be with who understand from that who our perfect client is and what our project or contract sweet spot is, and select the pursuits you're going to go after over the next two to three years and then do CAM on the current clients or prospects, do capture on the top five pursuits.
[16:34.8]
That's how you double the margins of a business like this. It's not rocket science, but almost nobody does it. But then the key linchpin is this leader we're talking that you're talking about. Yeah, if they have the right skills, competencies, but particularly gravitas and entrepreneurialism to steer the business in that way over time.
[16:57.6]
It won't happen overnight. We can never switch a switch. It's all about baby steps. Might take you three to five years, but when you do it, you will smash your competition to bits. But there are actually Very few, relatively speaking, leaders of bid functions that have that kind of level of influencing skills.
[17:17.4]
Gravitas, entrepreneurialism. They tend to be, at best, bidding professionals who feel that they need to still be working on bids as well as lead this group of people. And that's always the recipe for disaster. Yes, you do need to lead from the front and get involved in some bids and stuff, but it's more important to focus the business on the deals you could and should win with the right clients than bidding everything and killing yourself and your team doing it.
[17:45.1]
Yeah. And I think if you've built up your management and leadership competence and confidence from early on, because it's not something you sort of go on a course and then on the Monday, suddenly you're brilliant at it, you've got to learn it over time, practise it, so it becomes sort of second nature.
[18:09.6]
If you're doing that early on, it's already there, so you've got the chance to add to it with those other wider, broader thinking areas. If you've got the capability and you've got the will to do it, you've at least got that underpinning, and credibility as well as a good manager, because that sort of, that comes out across a wider management team.
[18:37.7]
Is this person just good at the technical bidding stuff or are they a genuinely great manager, a great leader, as part of that team? And if they are, that gives you the credibility amongst your peers, at that SMT level to be able to be heard as well.
[18:57.1]
Yes. So there's all of that, the nitty gritty stuff, so there's a lot of got out there at the moment on, sort of people, centric leadership, etc. And as we were talking about, as we've spoken about already, because it's not been an intentional career path and there's lots of sort of adverse selection, lots of people falling into it, and therefore an unusually high proportion of people that are not high performers as a leader of a bid function, even if you've only got three or four people, but like, I had like 25 odd, you're going to get, you know, 20% rock stars at the top, 20% people that need to leave at the bottom, and then a sort of middle band that you need to manage and you manage those three groups very differently and do different things.
[19:40.6]
The bit that I wasn't good at was I was too nice. I wanted everyone to win, I wanted to help them want to go too far. When fundamentally you need to be not Cutthroat. But you need to do the best thing for the business and those people and find the right jobs for them or they need to get off the bus because they're not going to enjoy the job, they're going to hold everybody else back.
[20:04.3]
So that bit, and it was a big part of the job actually, I joined with a real transformation. I basically inherited a bit of a mixed bag, with a real journey to go on just in bidding excellence, let alone what we did in terms of pipeline and strategy.
[20:22.0]
We doubled the turnover of the business from a billion to 10,2 billion in three years, which was not easy and a great adventure actually. Wonderful business, wonderful people. But there were some people in that proposals function that shouldn't be working at Mace. And so that's, that's a, that's a real challenge to deal with that HRE performance type stuff because like I say, I, I like to work with people, be friends and have a good time and treat people like family.
[20:50.5]
But sometimes they've got to go. So that's the bit that I really struggle with and sometimes that is part of helping them win because you know damn well they're not going to win in bidding. So actually helping them get out of bidding and helping them find where they are going to be good, actually that is a good thing.
[21:09.2]
But sometimes you've got, you know, you gotta, you gotta bite the bullet and actually address that rather than just hope that they figure it out for themselves. Yes, they do. And you have to use the right processes and do all the right stuff in the detail.
[21:24.2]
And as anyone that knows me knows, I'm not very good at that. I prefer to be a bit more entrepreneurial and shoot from the hip and come up with great strategies and go and win deals. So, there was some learning there. We've talked about the recruitment selection bit.
[21:41.7]
That's a real minefield because there's only, you know, less than half of people that are the real sort of rock stars that you'd want and you know, lots, lots of people, whose CVs look really good but they haven't really done the stuff or they've worked at a lower performing business.
[21:57.7]
And so you got to deal with all of that kind of stuff, as, and then you've got the other HR leadership aspects that will take over your life when you run a team. In the bidding isn't a great career. Naturally. Naturally for women who want to go and have a family, it can be too easy for it to become male dominated.
[22:19.9]
You know, if women want to come back part time, there's a real challenge there in how the business facilitates that. When deadlines, late nights, challenging clients. And again, there's lots of excuses in bid teams around that and I think lots of bid teams don't do a very good job of it.
[22:36.1]
We worked really hard, hard at it. My boss at the time, Matt Gough, worked really hard. It didn't get it right all of the time. But by the nature of the beast, that stuff's really challenging. And so you have to be really meticulous in your approach to creating opportunities for everyone equally, you know, whatever their background, gender, all of their different sort of indicators, differences, because diversity of thought is really important.
[23:06.6]
Empathy and emotional intelligence is really important. And you find women in particular tend to be really strong at that and help us win deals that perhaps we don't deserve to sometimes. And so trying to find ways to create a level playing field in a very unlevel environment, it's really tough.
[23:26.9]
It binds with. It's finding that combination of. If you like. I sort of see management a bit like a bid. I see management as the compliance bit of a bid. And then you've got the leadership bit being the compelling bit of a bid.
[23:46.6]
And just like in a bid where you've got a. You gotta have both because if you're missing one of them, you're not likely to win. You got to be able to do the same when you're in a, you know, we're in a senior position in bidding, you've got to have all the compliance stuff, you've got to have all that stuff, but you've got to have the vision, the drive, the bit that's going to get people following you, the bit that's going to get them motivated towards an aim that's not just win the next bid, a wider aim, as well.
[24:23.8]
So combining those two things, and doing it well, it's a challenge. But as I say, it's something that if you don't address until you've got that position, you're going to struggle.
[24:43.6]
And so my thing is really encouraging people start early, get the basics right early. Yeah. So that you can really build on those things so that, you know, when you get to the positions where it's vital, you've already got that underpinning.
[25:02.6]
It's all. It's already the way I do things. Yes, I think it's, it's important when we Talk about influencing skills, which is at the nub of what you're just saying there. It's important that that's done with integrity. And so we can't lie to people, shine people on, stretch the truth.
[25:22.0]
When we're engaging with our, well with anyone but particularly our stakeholders in the business, people that we work on bids with and your senior people. That's a pretty short lived game, bullshitting frankly. You know we, you just need to come up with the right most valuable answers to the business and its clients.
[25:44.2]
Yeah, it's not that hard really but a lot of people really struggle with that and we just, I don't want people to go on a Wolf of Wall street style influencing, sell me this pen type course and think that they need to, you know, shine people on or whatever.
[25:59.4]
It's not about being a secondhand car salesman and conning people, to get the right outcome. It's about doing the work, coming up with the data, showing the value in doing things differently and bidding less, being better at bid, no bids or whatever it is that gets the business down the road.
[26:15.8]
And it's the same with your staff as well. There's a certain amount of stuff that you can't tell your staff at times, HRE things or whatever. But if you set a vision together going over there, it's going to look like this, you know, get them excited about it, being in the fight together, life's a lot easier.
[26:36.2]
Yeah, yeah. And we've got a lot of those skills as bidders because, you know, I'm writing something at the moment. We talk about, we understand customer decision making units, decision making processes, you know, all the stuff that's sort of beyond where I was a few years ago in terms of identifying decision makers, influencers, gatekeepers, all that sort of stuff.
[27:01.2]
We do all that stuff as part of work. Winning and bidding in customers And influencing persuasion. I mean that's what we're about in bidding, ethically. But we take all those skills and we don't necessarily then think, well I've got all those skills, I can apply them internally, I can apply them to understanding, you know, if someone's making bid, no bid decisions in the senior management team that we think are a bit mad, thinking about who's making that decision, who's influencing what the process is, what the unit is, all those sort of things and using those persuasion and influencing skills that we use every day in bidding, actually using them in our own organisation.
[27:54.5]
Yeah, well it's Just it's just like you say, it's the same as with clients. It's people in leadership positions are making decisions for a reason then probably not stupid, they will be a driver, there'll be a reason, some sort of metric on their back, a business objective that is misaligned.
[28:14.3]
Something's going on. I find this with my clients all the time that they're driving at the wrong things or there is often a lack of understanding. I've got a client at the moment, massive, well known business who are bidding everything because their leadership don't understand their funnel.
[28:30.8]
But it's probably because their owners have put some big numbers on their back or said you know, you've got to do a bit more margin than last year. And they haven't realised that it's actually quite easy for them to figure out what their pipeline is and influence deals and it.
[28:46.9]
So it's you know, getting hold of those leaders, helping them understand the data of where we're successful, where we really make money, what the real cost of sale is. You know, if they realise what the real cost of sale of bidding some of these things was, they wouldn't do it.
[29:04.2]
That's often something that we need to influence. And as a head of bids or bid, functional bid director, it's absolutely in your power to go and have a coffee with one of the accountants and figure this stuff out and build a business case to the business and be that sort of leader, that North Star in how the business approaches growth.
[29:24.1]
Yeah. And you can choose to complain about it and go, it's terrible all these people making these decisions that are impacting my bidding and it's hard, it's stressful. It's the environment is preventing me from winning.
[29:42.8]
When you get to those leadership positions you can go, okay, well I want to change it, I'm going to change it, I am going to influence those things and take a degree of control over it. And I think it's something embidding that not enough people are necessarily thinking that way.
[30:04.2]
There's a bit more of a we are the victims of circumstances rather than we are capable of changing our circumstances. And I think that is something that's a change of mindset as much as a skill set.
[30:25.7]
But it's difficult that stuff because there are some businesses that won't change that have an owner or leaders particularly I'm finding actually private equity, equity backed businesses, the whole private equity. Oh sorry.
[30:41.2]
Because you've done something but the Whole, the whole private equity fraternity do not fundamentally understand or care about how you grow a B2B. B2G business that because they buy 10 businesses in a batch they only need one of them to fly.
[30:58.5]
A couple of them will fail, the rest in the middle will meander about and they'll refinance them and change their leadership or, or whatever. But they're looking for that one rocket ship and very often the B2B. B2G businesses are somewhere in that middle pack and so they just put metrics on them like number of bids submitted as the only KPI on growth that is insane.
[31:21.5]
And drives completely the wrong behaviour and doesn't deliver the outcomes and blows the business to bits and they just, they don't get it and they don't seem to care. So sometimes you have to recognise as a leader. Actually I should probably leave and go and get a job somewhere else and maybe take my team with me.
[31:38.2]
Let's go to an environment where you can change things or it is a positive environment where they are bidding for the right sorts of deals and doing, investing in the work upstream. Fundamentally if you're in a business that bids for everything, you're in an immature business and it's unpleasant and you don't have to live your life like that.
[31:56.5]
There are businesses, it is a smaller proportion but there are businesses that understand their funnel, do a fairly good job of this stuff. Clients will bend us out of shape and all of that kind of stuff. But on average the more predictable, better run businesses are, the better place for big teams to work.
[32:13.4]
Like Mace has certainly become the big team at Mace, certainly in consult Mike Reader's old business have the highest well being scores in the whole business, in their staff feedback survey or they did a while ago. You know, they've got a lot of thoughtful people leading that function when they're bidding really big stressful stuff, with clients sometimes who can be a bit variable, you know, difficult deadlines and all that kind of thing.
[32:41.1]
So that's one hell of an achievement. There's a lot of work gone into that. So yeah, either you know, recognise you can't fix it and leave or recognise you can and then get on with it. Yeah, yeah. It's that chicken and egg thing, isn't it?
[33:00.2]
Do you find the place that's already set up or is it partly your responsibility to at least get a sore forehead from trying to bang the brick wall a few times, see if it goes down? So yeah, I think there's a.
[33:17.8]
There's a lot more conversations for us to have in the whole bid world around being better managers, being better leaders, understanding what that actually means, and not seeing ourselves as the victims of circumstance and going, well, hang on, I've been on all the courses about bid writing and bid manager and bid processes and things like that.
[33:52.9]
Why aren't things working out for me?
[33:58.7]
It's about that, plus really understanding how to be a manager and how to be a leader, and putting that into practise and you won't get it right first time. I think I saw something you wrote, actually, Jeremy, about training courses being 10% of the actual.
[34:21.8]
Yeah. To do it with 20, 20, how you interact with other 70 being on the job and you've got to combine those things together. Yeah, it's the old, 70, 2010 learning and development philosophy.
[34:39.4]
It's moved on a bit, actually. There's some research done in 2018, I think it was now a little while back, that's updated it to more like 55, 25, 20, I think, in terms of the split. But fundamentally, because I get this all the time, it's quite a frustration for me and it's slightly ironic because I obviously run a training business, but, people, bring me in to do a bid writing training course because.
[35:04.0]
And they think that sticking people in the room with me for a couple of days will suddenly transform their world and win rate and it will be better, but it's the start of a journey. We've got to create interactions and space and time for them to develop over time and they've got to practise on the job and have the right tools and processes to follow.
[35:26.4]
Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't say you're wasting your time, but the return on investment is nowhere near as strong as it could be, than if we created a proper, you know, environment for winning. So, yeah, you're right. And it's the same for leaders, like you say, we can't put someone on a leadership development programme with you and expect them to just fly overnight.
[35:47.6]
You've got to create an environment where they have a mentor, so probably someone board level or pretty senior, you know, so they've got that kind of exposure. They've got a buddy who's another manager, perhaps somewhere else in the business or leader, that they can buddy up with and, you know, go for a beer with and talk about that shitty HR stuff or, you know, whatever it is, and then they've got to go and practise and be allowed the space to, you know, and their team need to recognise they're developing as a leader.
[36:19.1]
That was the other thing with my, my team at mace. You know, people look up to you and there is the shadow of a leader and all that sort of stuff, but they also assume that you know the answer to everything and you're up to something. You've got some grand plan all the time and, you know, knocking on your door, where's my promotion?
[36:35.4]
And all that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, I'm a human and I'm doing my best. I've got a strategy that I developed together with you. Not, don't tell your people what they're going to be doing, you know, in terms of strategy and vision.
[36:51.9]
Do it together, get their buy in. We did a whole high performing teams programme, about the vision of where we were going and behaviours and all of that kind of stuff because it was the coolest builder in the world. It deserved the best big team in the world in that space. But you got, you got to do it with them.
[37:10.2]
You know, the leaders are not solely accountable on their own for everything. Everyone has their own proportion of accountability for their performance and for their development. Yeah. And being, you know, again, you know, going back to what I said, the earlier you start that, the easier it is in terms of, you know, if you're in your first management position, working with your team, being quite open about the fact.
[37:35.7]
I am learning here. Yeah. Not pretending you've got all the answers, that will help because the more open you are to feedback, the more that 70% or 50%, whichever, the model of learning on the job will work better because that, you know, you'll get the feedback from people if you're proactive about how am I managing.
[38:01.0]
You'll get, you know, people will tell you. Yeah, they will, yeah, yeah. That helps you improve. So there's a, there's a lot of different elements to it. I think the thing that I've sort of picked up is the earlier you start, the quicker you'll get those things naturally under your belt as how I do things and then you can start to build on them.
[38:28.7]
If you ignore it, then you'll find there are gaps that are going to be difficult to fill or fill properly once you get to those senior levels. And much as that, 50 or 70% learning on the job is a big part of any training course.
[38:48.1]
And recognising that the other side of it is if you just try and learn on the job without any framework or understanding or best practise, you might learn the wrong thing. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's, you got to have all of it. It's a journey together.
[39:04.8]
Yeah, you're bang on. And so, yes, it's a really important conversation that I'd have people having because it is one of the most difficult to teams in any business to lead and to manage. There are, you know, there are peaks and troughs in activity.
[39:21.9]
There's a real mixed bag in terms of the capability you can recruit and retain in the market and performance. You're probably going to have more HR issues than many other functions because of that. You know it's, and it's obviously the lifeblood of the business and so.
[39:38.9]
But you get out of some of that by getting on the front foot in your funnel, as we said, trying to stem the tide of what's coming at you and your team, like you say, by, by starting early. It's, I think for everyone it's important and I do this coaching with very senior people all the way down to young kids and it's one of the things we did at Mace was, you know, just set yourself a vision.
[40:00.3]
What do you, my wife and I have done this for ourselves and updated it recently. You know, where do you see yourself in 5, 10 and 20 years time in terms of personally and then work and then achievements and well being etc? Do we do a bit of a team app, and sort of a bit of a post it note exercise?
[40:20.7]
Because if you can come up with that North Star of where you want to be, what it looks and feels like. So not a company in a particular job but do you want to lead people, manage people or do you just want to work on bids? Do you, you know, where do you want to be in the world working on what types of deals in what sort of firm and how does that interact personally with where you want to be in terms of family and relationships and sport and other activities?
[40:43.0]
You know, how you want to live your life. If you can figure, figure out what that looks and feels like, then that acts as your North Star in making good decisions. And that was what spurred me to leave Mace actually, was that it wasn't just that I wasn't a good enough people manager or as good as I would have liked or found it challenging, it was that I wouldn't be able to maintain that run rate and be healthy in terms of just working hours, stress, all of that.
[41:11.7]
Kind of stuff. And so it wasn't for me, whereas other people are harder in those things, enjoy those things better. So it's not a stress if you enjoy it and you're good at it. So you've got to be just honest with yourself about where this is going because you don't want to wake up in 20 years time, time working in a crap business with a challenging team, constantly working on bids yourself and trying to manage all this other stuff.
[41:33.9]
That's not, that's not a life. Got to figure out a bit of a vision. And I think as, as you said earlier, part of that, North Star is, is the whole ethical element of it as well. It's not just where do I want to be, it's, it's how do I want to get there.
[41:54.6]
Not just the steps you take, it's, it's the, you know, can you look back and be proud of how you did it? Yeah, and, and that, and that works, that works personally, but it also works as a big team, as an organisation as well.
[42:12.2]
There's got to be trust there. You've got to have each other's backs through all of this stuff. You're going to be in it together in some difficult times on bids. Hopefully not. Sometimes you will. Things go wrong. Shit happens, doesn't it? Someone lets you down, doesn't deliver something or, you know, client issues of clarification and it's all hands to the pump, late night, making a load of changes or document corrupts or whatever it is.
[42:34.3]
You know, if something's going to go wrong, it's going to go wrong on a bid, always. And so having each other's back, trusting each other, looking out for each other is super important and you've got to lead from the front on that. So the human The human centred leadership piece is important for that. But you've got to be leading a team that deserves to be there and should be there.
[42:53.0]
Yeah, good. Okay, mate, really appreciate that. That's a, that's a strong chat. So where can people find you, Nigel, on LinkedIn? Find me on LinkedIn. The course is@mybidcareer.co.uk one word.
[43:10.7]
So have a look at that. It's primarily an online e learning course at its core, because it's built around people's ability to spend a lot of time out of, out of the bidding time.
[43:26.0]
Sometimes people can't. Sometimes you've only got 10 minutes to spare. So it's sort of built around people being able to spend a short time micro learning, stuff like that. So, yeah. Mybigcareer.co.uk have a look. Very good.
[43:41.8]
Yeah, I encourage you to. Thanks very much, mate. We'll see you next time. We'll invent another reason to have a chat, I'm sure. Look forward to it. Thank you very much for your time. Really, really good episode. Thank you. Take care.
