Leading the Auckland Branch @ Assurity

It's been a little over six months since I took on the role to help lead our Auckland team here at Assurity, and over the last two days I have taken some time to reflect, as well as document some of my thoughts that might help young (and older) leaders as they venture into their first big leadership role in an organisation.

If you asked me why I took the job, I would say it started with a passion for our people in the branch. Having been a member of the team, I see how much our talented team of invididuals work every-day to deliver great outcomes for our clients. Usually as an organisation we make it easy for the team to do this, but on occasions when we don't, I feel a sense of unease that we simply haven't been living out the values in which we teach our clients. This is likely where it all started for me, and still today whenever things get tough, I find myself having to go back to my "why".

Over the past six months, I've tried a few experiments which I've found really effective, which I believe has worked well for us as a team and led to some great results both in engagement and performance of the business to-date. Here are some of our experiments baked into key lessons:

Lesson #1 - Keep the vision clear

Having mainly worked in the product development world, I had so much to learn coming into the professional services industry. One of the key differences we pride ourselves in doing is that we don't body-shop our team out to our clients. We work hard to find the right engagements, spend time with staff to understand them as human beings, and then align interesting and challenging client engagements that help staff grow. I'm sure for those who have worked in this industry longer than I have know that while the intent is always there, it's at times incredibly difficult to deliver on. I'll be the first to put my hand up and say there have been times when I haven't been proud of the engagements staff have been in, but one thing I can say is that we're learning, making different mistakes (when we do!), and staff now have a greater say into what types of projects they want to deliver, and where they are placed.

Having a clear vision for what we are working towards has been such an important aspect of our success as a branch. I am so glad that we have an amazing team which buy-in to the vision in which we are working towards in our branch, and often volunteer to do things which may not benefit them personally, but do it for the good of the wider team. Rather than individuals working on engagements, we've become much more of a family that look out for one another, holding each other to account on how we're collectively getting closer to what we've aspired to create. At the start of the year, I shared the vision for our branch with Auckland team:

..we've become much more of a family that look out for one another, holding each other to account on how we're collectively getting closer to what we've aspired to create.

"We will consistently deliver projects that make a difference to our clients. We do this by attracting and retaining the best talent around the world, world-class leaders in their field. Our people have a relentless focus on delighting our clients and are proud of their work, because they know their leaders have the same relentless focus on them. Assurity will be a place where people realize their potential to the fullest extent, and in doing so, become an accelerator for our people to achieve important life goals.

By working together in cross-skilled teams, not in silos or as individuals, we solve complex problems for our customers and are known as the role model delivery partner in this new digital age. Our customers will be our biggest advocates, and we will be the centre of a network for innovation, collaboration and learning for organizations in the region.

We will maintain this spirit, even as we significantly grow in scale, and by virtue of our success, we will have made a national impact by exponentially increasing the number of successful projects delivered in New Zealand."

.. and after a few refinements and tweaks, we're all working towards this common vision, breaking down silo's between our teams, ensuring that our leaders are the biggest supporters of our staff - all centred around delivering value to you, our clients.

I recently presented back to our SLT around how we're tracking against our vision, one quarter into our new financial year - and whilst there are many things that the Auckland team can be proud of, I am humbled to be a part of an organisation that doesn't just celebrate the success of traditional metrics, but also whether or not we are living our values.

Without a clear vision, we would've continued being individuals working on individual engagements, or silo's fighting and building turf trying to out-do one another. I would encourage everyone who is leading a team or organisation, please please take time to ensure you have a clear vision for the future - then take time to share and re-share with your teams.

Lesson #2 - Keep the people engaged

So much of what makes a service business successful is the people and talent within the organisation, without it, the organisation is like an empty shell. Being relatively new to this industry, still today I am often appalled when I hear stories of the ways some organisations in this industry use to retain and keep talent. From paying a higher than normal salary but having an unspoken rule of "not reviewing salaries", to hiring low-waged off-shore workers and then locking them into long term bonded contracts to deliver uninspiring work, I am surprised that these tactics are used in lieu of something very simple, and much better - treat people like people and they will deliver some of their best work of their lives. Bill Hybels, a speaker and author I respect once said, "The problem is always leadership, and the solution is always leadership". Keeping your team engaged requires a balance of empathy, courage to challenge status quo, and conviction to do what's right.

The problem is always leadership, and the solution is always leadership

I'm incredibly lucky to have had a strong foundation at Assurity to build from, given that from an organisational level, we really do value people in the team like family. Despite this, we still had pockets of disengagement in Auckland though, and I would say a big part of this was due to a lack of good management practices around giving honest and prompt feedback, establishing regular meaningful one-to-ones, and as a result not understanding each individuals career goals and aspirations.

Keeping your team engaged requires a balance of empathy, courage to challenge status quo, and conviction to do what's right.

I'm an avid believer in Jack Welch's leadership practices, particularly around having candor in the workplace. On top of this, a good friend Ahmed Sidkey someone who I respect a lot, shared Kim Scott's Radical Candor

In a nut-shell, it's about being brave to both challenge directly but care personally. Too often we lean towards one or the other, but to truly help people grow, leaders have to practice radical candor. Truth be told it was incredibly difficult and really challenging to implement, and at times I felt like a bit of a hard-arse and was really tempted to just let things go. But the interesting thing was that as the team started to do this, I found high performers started to become much more engaged, and those who were "lower performers" either decided that it wasn't the right place for them, or lifted their game. A good win-win situation.

The net result is we've had much higher engagement over-all and definitely a much more engaged and performing culture. There's still a ton of work to do for us to get closer to our Branch Vision, and we're starting to look at ways to introduce an impediments backlog, where we can start to address things that can help our teams be better engaged. Without an engaged team, there's no way we could be successful!

Lesson #3 - Make the times together memorable

I might be alone on this one, but a big part of what I've poured investment into are in intangible investments. I remember heading out to meet a team at a client, that had frankly been working in an extremely tough environment for over 6 months. They had been doing a role that wasn't utilising their skill-sets, but we wanted to try and work with the client to see if we could change their mindsets, with the hopes of helping to delivering greater value down the line. At that time I remember the norm was to book a meeting room at the BNZ centre, meet the team there and do a fairly corporate meet and greet. I really didn't feel this was the right approach, we take clients out to coffee in a relaxed environment to have open conversations, why shouldn't it be the same with staff?

We ended up meeting at a local cafe, and it was amazing what such a small shift did with the team. They felt valued and heard - I know this sounds really silly, but we often neglect simple expenses like this and the impact it could have. Shifting the environment and the setting and investing a small amount made the time we had together memorable. People might forget what you say, but they will remember what you did, and how it made them feel.

People might forget what you say, but they will remember what you did, and how it made them feel.

In addition to investing in some of the intangible things, one of the challenges we faced was that as consultants, we're often out on client engagements and spread apart. Unlike product development organisations where you are working with a relatively stable team and can get to know one another better, the opportunity to connect as a team within the branch is somewhat quite limited. This led to people feeling isolated and it was difficult to establish our own culture, as the majority of our time was spent with our clients. However there have been two things that we've tried through different experiments that have been a big success in helping create memorable moments and better connections within the team that I'd love to share:

• WhatsApp has been a great tool for us all to connect personally and professionally. We've now got different groups set up for engagements, teams, as well as a wider Aucksurity one. It's enabled us to share, connect and create our own little culture, despite being far away from each other.

• As a branch we've invested in having regular fly-home times, which are 2 hours every fortnight, that we take time out of our client engagements (Yes! Forgo billable hours!) to come together and connect. We run our own internal activities, often workshops and knowledge sharing, where we work on ourselves as a branch, and share new skills or techniques. The picture for this article was a recent one that Jakub on of our new joiners helped to run, using improvisation techniques that help build creativity for agile teams.

Creating memorable moments help build on culture, but also increases engagement and a reason to come back to base. For awhile last year it was a challenge getting staff to come back to the branch as branch activities seemed foreign when you spend such a long time on client engagements - but we've definitely seen the fruits of investing time to make our team interactions more easier, frequent and memorable.

Lesson #4 - Pace yourself for the long-haul

It might be odd that I often use We and Us in this article. The reason I do is that I really can't take sole credit for the positive outcomes that has been achieved to date. A good friend reminded me last year, "to go far you have to go together", and for someone who is impatient and used to doing things on my own, it has been one of my biggest learnings. In leading our Auckland team, I'm joined by Elly Trobe, Phil Shimmin, Simon Holbrook, Peter Savage and Nick Foard. I can't say how much of a privilidge it is to be able to lead together with people who you trust and value. I've learned that to achieve something great, it requires time, endurance and distance. When someone has a difficult day or week, we're there to support each other, and even though we've still got a lot of learning and growing to do together as a team - we are very much excited about working together to helping our teams in being the best dang delivery partner in Auckland that we can be.