An Interview with...Nigel Guest

Hi Nigel! Firstly, to help people get to know you, how would you describe yourself in 3 words?

Pragmatic, Motivated & Adaptable

Thank you! I know you served with the RAF for just over 23 years – that’s impressive! What influence do you feel that experience made on the subsequent chapter(s) of your career?

Yes, great times and I actually think the strap line for the new Royal Navy recruitment drive is spot on, so I would say ‘Born in Bolton but made in the Royal Air Force’ accurately reflects that part of my career. There are so many things that I owe to the service and the people that I served with that shape who I am today, and the subsequent successes I’ve had in the private sector. The military hugely invest in their people so the opportunity to develop both professional and leadership skills was fantastic and I tried to embrace every opportunity and was lucky to benefit from some great role models and mentors along the way.

Today I use many of the same values and skills in business and much of that is underpinned with building, leading and being part of great teams. In my experience, the starting point is always being clear about the ‘mission’ and creating a shared understanding about what the team wants to achieve and then empowering people to deliver. The military largely employs a distributed leadership model – it’s rarely about barking orders and much more about ensuring teams and leaders understand the big picture and their part in achieving the overall mission which drives people to take responsibility and be accountable, so great communication skills are essential.

There is a bit of a theme here in that whilst I have a good breadth and depth of technical skills it’s people that really make the difference in my view. It’s also a large part of what makes work enjoyable – we’re social animals right? I’ve been very lucky over the years and have had some great bosses who really encouraged me and pushed me outside my comfort zone and amazing teams that delivered great results and this also carried on into my civilian career, particularly in Capita and now in Caja. It was also fun along the way!! even in those situations where I found myself in parts of the world that are definitely off the tourist map and away from home and family for extended periods it’s the team that makes it worthwhile – I also have some great stories to tell in the office J

I’ve recently met someone who spent time in the Navy Reserves and she also links her leadership skills to her time spent with them. Back to you though, beyond the RAF you’ve spent a number of years working in Transformation, particularly across the public sector. Do you think that sector truly embraces Transformation or is there more that needs doing?

This is a great question James and a subject I could talk about at length as but it is definitely complex. The public sector has been under pressure for a number of years now driven by a number of factors such as austerity measures, public expectations, workforce pressures and the increasing pace of technology. In recent years, however, there’s no doubt that the primary case for change is being driven by financial pressures and this then sets the agenda and largely dictates the approach.

Financially driven programmes tend to have poorly balanced portfolios in my view, struggle to get the buy in of staff and importantly the general public who are of course the customers of public services. There is no doubt that there are still significant opportunities for efficiencies and productivity improvements across public services but unless you can get the buy-in of the people involved and empower leadership at a local level aligned around a common vision then it will always be difficult to drive real transformation and move beyond simply cutting or rationing services. Technology also offers a huge opportunity to transform services and whilst there have been some good examples of ‘Digital Transformation’ in the public sector, history suggests in general the sector has a poor record of delivering technology on schedule and within budget.

Since joining Caja it’s been great working with people that share a common philosophy about transforming services and businesses – we take our clients on a journey that starts with the ‘mission’ (again a theme here) and we develop programmes that align People, Process and Technology to deliver outcomes and new ways of working that achieve that mission; financial efficiencies are often one of the benefits of this approach but by no means the only tangible benefits that are realised – hopefully this helps ensure any changes are also sustained.

So overall, still lots that needs doing across the public sector but I do worry about political influence both at a national and local level that has become more polarised recently and I can’t help but feel we will continue to see fairly regular policy changes and political points scoring that will only make delivering change more difficult.

Definitely more that needs doing then, and a tough landscape to do it in. With your Engineering background, I know you are passionate about Technology especially the emerging technologies that are coming to the forefront. What opportunities does this present for the public sector in particular?

I think technology presents a huge opportunity across most sectors and especially the public sector. We talk about currently being in the 4th Industrial Revolution and developments particularly in Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation are moving at real pace and already having a huge impact across service industries in particular. We have already seen changes in banking, retail and telecoms for example and we all interact with those industries very differently compared to say 10 years ago. I’m almost certain that we will increasingly see this pace of change across public sector and we can already undertake a whole host of activities digitally using online services through a Personal Government Gateway, such as submitting your tax return, accessing your driving licence records etc. As our behaviours and preferences continue to change to a ‘digital first’ option we will also see a greater use of ‘big data’ and predictive analytics, coupled with the automation of many routine tasks. However, there are some ethical questions that need to be considered along the way such as concerns about job losses through automation for example but I my view this is about understanding what the future workforce needs to look like – advancing technology will always generate new types of job and someone needs to programme the bots!!

A really positive fact for UK PLC is we are actually good at technology in its widest sense and we still world leaders at developing new tech. Look at Cambridge as an example – the largest technology cluster in Europe with around 60,000 people employed in tech businesses. Engineering also contributes to over 25% of UK GDP so it’s a key part of our economy and needs to be given every opportunity to continue this success through the government supporting businesses. We also need to continue to encourage even more young people into STEM based careers through high quality and properly funded education that starts in schools and through into a number of different learning routes that attract, encourage and develop students from all backgrounds.

That’s a great point about how young people are encouraged more and (in my opinion) at an early and informative enough age. More recently you have become a champion of Entrepreneurialism – where has that grown from and how does it build upon everything you’ve achieved and learnt to date?

Ah yes this is an area I’m really passionate about and I recall this great quote I read recently by Guy Kawasaki one of the original Silicon Valley marketing guru’s and venture capitalists (he was one of the Apple team that marketed the Apple Macintosh back in the early 80s), to quote Guy:

‘The good news about entrepreneurship is that your fate is in your hands. The bad news is that your fate is in your hands!!’

This really made me smile and it’s amusing because it’s such true statement, we get out of business what we put into it and one thing I’ve observed from really successful people in my network is that they definitely have some common traits. Obviously, really successful entrepreneurs are not averse to taking a risk; however, the risk is often mitigated through what people often refer to these days as ‘Lean Start-up’ principles which in a nutshell is about failing fast but learning quicker. This is how I interpret Guy Kawasaki’s message – you need to always take positive action to move forwards, and taking action is always better than doing nothing in business and that is entirely in your control – your fate is definitely in your hands! Successful entrepreneurs have good ideas and always act quickly, build that minimum viable solution, they go talk to people about their idea – customers, investors, constantly testing and learning as they go. They also know when to give it up ie. Fail fast, there is no point in flogging the proverbial dead horse for years and getting nowhere.

You may be thinking, for someone that has committed much of his career working in or with the public sector – why are you interested in this? Well I’ve been in the private sector for 11 years now and been reasonably successful and when I look at my public sector clients I think they are crying out for a more entrepreneurial mind-set and skills. The principles absolutely read across, how many failed programmes do we see (certainly don’t fail fast and learn quicker) and in these days of financial pressures the public sector needs to scale up its ability to trade what it does well. Local authorities are a great example, where they deliver a wide range of services and can sell those to wider customers to either create additional revenues or simply make some services self-sustaining – grounds maintenance, property maintenance, shared support services etc, this in turn releases cash for those critical services such as social care where the financial pressure is really acute. This is why we’ve established our Entrepreneurial Academy for local authorities at Caja and we are already helping some councils develop their entrepreneurial skills.

I’ve not heard that quote from Guy before but you’re right, it’s so true! And finally, you’re now a Director of Caja Management Consulting. How does Caja differentiate itself and what would you say to anyone that feels their business needs some form of change but doesn’t know where to begin?

I’ve really enjoyed Caja so far and I guess it started with those early conversations I had with Caroline Brown the founder of the business. Caroline is very modest when you meet her but has achieved some amazing successes in business (her stories of landing deals in Hollywood even top some of my war stories J) – the thing that was very clear immediately was that we shared some key principles which I guess is partly founded in the roles we’ve both held in large corporates. Caja is about helping organisations transform and we have a strong belief that this is only truly achieved through aligning ‘People, Process and Technology’ in the change process so we have brought together a team of people and an associate community that actually know how to do this. We also believe that the support we provide has to go beyond simply helping our customers think through their vision for transformation – we aim to transfer skills and build capability in our customer teams and we are all happiest when we have our sleeves rolled-up and actually get stuck in and help organisations deliver, solving problems, driving their strategy forward. I did say I was ‘pragmatic, motivated and adaptable’ at the start of our conversation.

So, I guess any businesses or organisations out there wanting to drive real change, absolutely start with the mission and then apply the fail fast, learn quicker principles in executing change that really aligns people, process and technology. Of course, if any organisations feel that they need some help or access to some great ‘critical friends’ then get in touch we would love to help.