Simplicity and Decency: Lessons from Customers, Colleagues & Changemakers

I find that the relative solitude of an airport lounge can be a great location for reflection and last week I found myself in Dublin airport reflecting on the annual Vodafone Senior Leadership Team Meeting (SLT).? As a rare opportunity for the most senior 150 leaders across the company to come together, this year’s meeting provided some extremely impactful highlights for me, all related to engagements with either customers, colleagues or changemakers.

From a customer perspective, we heard from Bill McDermott, a legendary customer obsessive who reminded us all that the customer is the only boss and as leaders, we must ‘know more, care more, and do more’ for our customers, every single day. Eddie Wilson, CEO of Ryanair commented that ‘Operations is Commercial’ which given the transformation we’re driving in our company to commercialise our Shared Operations, was a timely and extremely welcome ratification of our strategy and vison. Finally, Satya Nadella in a virtual discussion with our Group CEO, Margherita Della Valle talked with authority about ‘re-founding’ your business to stay relevant. Disrupting an already successful operation to remain relevant for our customers has consistently been the primary driver for change in our Shared Operations environment.

Whilst for me, the opportunity to engage face to face with my colleagues from around the world is incredibly precious, I always look forward most to the Day 1 keynote discussion with Margherita. Always in the context of our strategic pillars of Customers, Simplicity and Growth, the narrative was super clear and laser focused on the need to rapidly drive change. We went on to openly debate the criticality of leaders actually leading and not spectating, taking more risk, and genuinely being the change they want to see. We discussed the need to be ‘progressive, expert and supportive’ and most importantly, to truly believe the impact we can have individually and collectively if we ‘Just Go’.

I find that provocations such as these really make you look in the mirror and ask yourself if you have? Have you led change with all you’ve got? Have you also been a good follower? Have you executed well, and do you have the tangible business outcomes to prove it? In short, did you ‘Just go’? I remember a colleague once quoting Matthew Syed and said that I tend to show, ‘Humility in evaluation and Conviction in execution’. I think that it was meant half as compliment and half as ‘feedback’ for my tendency to be less vocal than I should about achievements and so I’m going to attempt to step out of my comfort zone and share an honest and proud evaluation...

Scanning the meeting room in Dublin, for the first time ever I saw four members of my leadership team present. Experienced, skilled, committed, high performing professionals who now represent our new, Commercialised Shared Operations business. Not only did I feel proud to see so many senior Operations leaders in the room, I could genuinely look at them, (and this applies to many more leaders who weren’t in the room), and answer affirmatively that yes, as individuals and as a team, we do believe in our business strategy, we have taken risk, we have shown courage, we have disrupted to create a new industry model, (more updates on this soon), we have worked relentlessly to execute and we have kept our execution promises to Vodafone – in short, we can be proud of a year where in hindsight, we did? ‘Just Go’. I’m extremely grateful and would like to thank again everyone in my direct team and beyond for such an impactful year.

However, the past is the past and looking ahead to the year to come, it was exciting to meet some of our new Changemakers. A small, hand-picked group of passionate leaders who will help us all be the change that we want to see. Speaking to them, they were all super impressive and bring the boundless enthusiasm and hunger to contribute that we need to drive impactful change across our company. This was another big highlight for me, however, as much I loved engaging with them, I must admit that my favourite changemaker arrived to speak at the end of the conference – Sir Bob Geldof. Politics, punk rock, charity and sport: he didn’t disappoint and when he shared his views on the role of a purpose led company in today’s chaotic global society, he was as passionate as I remember him being when he shouted through my TV at me on July 13th 1985. ?

In the same way that the messages from Margherita, Bill, Eddie and Satya were simple and clear, so was his closing; ‘’At the end of day, just be decent’’. A simple call-to-action from a man who in today’s money, was the catalyst for raising almost €0.5b in just 24 hours.?? ?

I’ve previously shared that I believe leaders in a digital world need to be four things, Technologists, Innovators, Futurists and Humanitarians and I saw all four in play in abundance in the last few days with the core messages received from all of the Customers, Colleagues and Changemakers, only reinforcing my view. In addition, whilst the strategies, business models and approaches may have differed, the common thread running through how these leaders so clearly expressed their views and articulated their priorities was Simplicity.

Simplicity is easy to demand and hard to deliver but I passionately believe that if you make things simpler, you’ll have more engaged colleagues who deliver better products and services to happier customers. Happy customers will buy more stuff and if they buy more stuff, your business will grow. Above all, be a decent, human leader and you’ll have followers that will ‘Just Go’ and collectively help you both navigate your challenges, and sustainably achieve your societal, corporate and personal growth ambitions for many years to come. Simplicity with a sprinkle of Decency, who knows what we can achieve…

James Magill Petah Green Pedro Sardo Sara Heuer Sara Tavacoli Wayne Spillett