Episode 62 – Chris Dhu | Leadership through crisis

In this episode I chat with Chris Dhu about all things risk, response, learning agility and leadership.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Welcome Chris to the podcast, mate. I’m so glad you’re available to join me. I know you’re a busy man and busy is, I shouldn’t use that word because I know you don’t like that word very much.

Chris Dhu  00:13

Thanks, Murray, I’m very glad to be joining you for this podcast. Yes, I have, “my attention is stretched”, I refuse to say that I’m busy.

Murray Guest  00:23

I’m looking forward to the chat, beecause over the years, I’ve really enjoyed our discussions around leadership and culture, and also just the passion you have for and how important that is, in the work that you do as a leader in the business. Can I just ask first off, you know, it’s been a topsy turvy year. What’s your your reflection, you think might just on these past? It’s funny, I lose track of weeks? I know six weeks, eight weeks? What’s what’s your reflection from a leadership perspective? And from a personal perspective?

Chris Dhu  01:02

Ah, I’ll start from a leadership perspective, Murray, I think 2020 it’s not the 2020 anyone envisioned? Let’s just sight the bloody obvious. The great thing about 2020 is it’s given awesome people, particularly, the people in my immediate circle, but also in Australia, the chance to stand up. It’s a massive opportunity. And lately, leadership’s various, it’s quite easy when when times are easy. Yep, there’s been several individuals, both macro and micro level across Australia that are really set to the pount I’m prouder, then I’ve ever been to be Australian, I’m prouder then I ever have been to be a New South Wales of New South Welshen, so to speak. I’m proud to be associated with the groups that I do, given the 2020 request.

Murray Guest  01:57

I love that. And I remember years ago in my career, someone saying people remember how you behave when times are tough. And I remember, you know, going back 20 years when there was redundancies and organizational change, and how some people would respond, and as you said, some would would perform better and others not. What are some leadership attributes you think you’ve seen really shine in these last couple of months?

Chris Dhu  02:22

It really starts with the last quarter of 2019 by the State of New South Wales, specifically in the last quarter, of 2019 November/December facing some harrowing times and a lot of customers and constituency now of our business, faced some really tough times and it required a lot of people to stand up. A lot of people that have organizations and, and I was proud to be a part of that recovery effort and I was proud to be a part of it, of the way it was led, as well as very, very happy to fall in line and follow the leadership of the RFS and, and the way that that went through watching, particularly the northern part of the state, rally together in a time of need, we got five minutes to catch our breath over Christmas, and then the south of the state had the turn. Not that it should be referred to as a turn, but always, the focus shifted there. I watched all the organizations that were part of that recovery grow. The rapid learning, the learning agility, from quarter to quarter for 2019, to quarter 1 2020 was absolutely second and I was fantastic to be a part of. And certainly I was I was reflecting and learn off learn off each other very, very quickly. Then we went from a point at which we were we were facing a localized threat. And we were banding together. So it was requiring mass mobilization into a location and mass assistance to almost the counter offset in the way that we’re now in facing an invisible threat. And we’ve actually had to distance ourselves rather than respond in one location. So we’ve gone actually had people say to me on a rather face the fire, at least I knew where it was. Yeah, that’s an interesting insight. But watching the way people have taken the growth from what we what we experienced as a team, to then how we apply that to COVID It’s been fantastic.

Murray Guest  04:29

Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s funny that, uh, not funny. I shouldn’t say you funny, but it’s easy to forget how bad things were at the end of last year and the start of this year, because with COVID times seem to have changed so dramatically from that time, but it’s good to reflect on that. And the leadership and the teamwork that so many organizations pulled together to, as you said, serve the community. I like how you actually mentioned rapid learning because there was that right I’ve heard I remember you and I were talking about earlier this year, how quickly people adapted and learn what they need to do change on the fly, to keep delivering on the work they need to do.

Chris Dhu  05:14

He was a really good example of that. The RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers watching salaries, first press briefings from from the north coast fire responses. And then watching the growth relative highs, I think that’s a that’s a real representation of what was going on in everyone’s world. And I like the way I actually see what we’re doing with COVID as a state and as Australia. A form of pulling together as much as that doesn’t sound quite right. That we’re pulling together. But it looks different, doesn’t mean it feels different. And I think it’s once again, it’s fantastic. Shows how quickly we can reflect, learn, and grow and reflect, learn and grow, keep going around that cycle. Every day is different. And what it builds is agility and responsibility, which particular is COVID code, it’s not going away, we were now preparing ourselves for ourselves for potential waves type approach on on off and that sort of stuff. agility is going to be the most important thing. And certainly, when I talk about agility, agility, and leadership is how we’re going to tackle that.

Murray Guest  06:29

Yeah. When you say leadership, I think not just leaders that have titles, but that’s self leadership and leadership at all levels.

Chris Dhu  06:37

And in all directions, leadership appears. Leadership Up, down, left, right. It’s incredibly important.

Murray Guest  06:44

Yeah, well, I may have lost track of time, but I think it must have been back around January, when you were down the south coast and how you were following the direction of the leadership of a whole range of different people doesn’t matter what level they are in the business, because that’s what was needed.

Chris Dhu  07:01

Yeah, that was quite interesting. I think this if I’m, if I’m right, and calling out the specific example, Murray, a member of I hit up, hit up the fleet function for essential energy. And as part of our for our bushfire response, we actually reorganized our structure as such, so that members of the team became hub response hub leaders. And yeah, I actually wound up being a response hub team member and reporting to someone that had traditionally reported to me which, obviously a really unique situation and a test of the strength of the team, that we’re able to understand that respected. Pay homage, to know why it’s there. And knowing that we’re committed to a common purpose, a common vision makes a massive, massive difference in that space. So yeah, it was a really cool, a really cool example of, of leadership, leadership agility, and ability, ability to respond

Murray Guest  08:00

Yeah, and I’m just reflecting on ego, and just throwing that out there that in those times, you can’t have an ego that’s going to get in the way of that agility. If your egos stuck in there, I need to be the leader, I need to be right, I need to be in control. That’s not going to work in that situation at all, is it?

Chris Dhu  08:19

No, not at all. And it’s its ego, ego or sense of self is, is can be quite destructive at times, at times, it can be productive as well, when it can be quite destructive when it’s not consistent with purpose. And that’s, the piece that’s really important there that the purpose of us conducting the response operations in the bush in the bushfire ravaged zones was that our customers were, you know, dire time of need, and we were there to provide the support. So having that laser light focus to that purpose, putting all the other stuff to the side and working together as a team. That’s, where that ego, all of a sudden slips away, I don’t like saying ego as a negative term if ego is aligned to that purpose, and it can actually be quite helpful. If it’s aligned with that purpose. If it’s, if it’s called a different intent or a different objective, then absolutely, that’s that’s distracting that needs to be that needs to be talked about. That’s a courageous conversation that needs to be.

Murray Guest  09:22

Yeah. You’re actually bringing to my awareness through that process and that support that you and the team went through how when there is a clear purpose, and we’re aligned in that purpose, how powerful that is. And a crisis and emergencies emergency situation gives you that. And then it’s about how do we take that to the day to day work? To make sure we are aligned to that purpose, day in day out?

Chris Dhu  09:51

Yeah, I think in that in that situation, and no different to COVID what we’re going through right now. It’s you can touch and feel and hold it. It’s a purpose. We’ve got laser-like focus on the purpose, because it’s real, it’s tangible. It’s relatable. That’s the challenge for anyone, you know, in senior leadership role as a new leader in a role is quite often beat the company, smaller companies, Every company has some form of vision, objective and purpose. And it’s always written iand clearly, you know, this is something I’m quite passionate about. It’s about how is that real for you? How’s that? how those words resonate with you? And how they, how they look and feel in your world? And are they consistent with your values. And that would be a big conversation that needs to be had. As soon as it becomes real, you can believe in it, and you can leave it anything less than it’s inauthentic. And and essentially, at that point in time, your visceral feeling a state of which I would hide you, or an idea that it might not be in the best and may not be leveraging your maximum potential but but unlocking that is really hard. I think the advantage of events such as bushfires and COVID, is it brings it into real Neato focus, which makes it easy to relate to but you’re right, doing it on a daily basis with a with a with a corporatized. Vision is difficult. That doesn’t mean we run away from it means we try hard.

Murray Guest  11:18

Yeah, yep. Now I made a comment to my wife the other day, I was thinking about your business and some similar businesses. And what I said was, I said that the businesses I work with, that seem to manage risk day in day out, seem to have responded better to COVID. So in my my work, I work with, you know, a whole range of different companies. And it seems like those ones that have a better risk understanding has a management perception and how they will go after that have responded better to COVID. What’s your thoughts on that one?

Chris Dhu  11:58

I think that’s a really good observation, Murray. And I think we could we could talk about this for an hour on risk. Obviously, I have a background in asset management. So risk management is something I’m really okay with. And without sounding like a broken record, I think this goes back to that tangibility again, particularly when Australia being nice working society that absolutely values worker health and worker wellbeing, which I’m incredibly proud to be a part of safety, in particular physical safety is really well understood. Which means things like risk perception, Hazard management, Hazard awareness, Hazard control, are really easy to talk about. It’s, I find it really interesting that the best, the companies that are really good at managing risk are quite often successful in their own right. And I can call that a number that, no, if you’re really good at managing risk, you’ll manage financial risks, social risk, cyber risk, sovereign risk, political risk, all in the same way that as you will physical risk. Having a really good understanding of what is important. So what actually, or actually say that the companies that are really good at managing risk, and particularly hazard awareness, perception and management, are the ones that are going to prosper and are prospering through COVID they tend to be the ones that see the opportunity and and see the see the the opportunity to pivot delivery models, for example, having good conversation with a friend the other day, and we talked about COVID. And the particular business he was he was part of he said, You know, COVID has actually not forced us to change our strategy. Our strategy hasn’t changed strategy of, of community and environment, which is what they’re in is the same, our delivery models change. So that’s actually because it’s not a strategy change. It’s a delivery pivot that does not require a structural change in our business doesn’t we’re managing that this way versus a business that is pivoting to a new product, which is absurd. Absolutely. Strategy change. Now we’re talking about ground up granite build their businesses that I see will go well, and are going well continue to go Well, I think the your point around physical high risk, high risk industrial businesses, we have we have an advantage, quite simply because we’ve we’ve had to get we’ve had a good because the the half life of impact from poor safety performance is absolutely it’s small, you have to be able to manage it really quickly, really well, really succinctly. That’s where so I think that that hazard management approach to short term hazard management is much better with those with those businesses, which is what’s coming to the fore.

Murray Guest  14:47

And I also think about managing a hazard you can’t see is part of the business that you do that you’re involved with. And we’ve got another one right now in this pandemic Yes, yes, the hidden or developing hidden or developing hazard management is always really interesting.

Chris Dhu  15:08

And we’ve actually been having a lot of conversations around this around trying to manage a hazard. We don’t have a real great handle on the likelihood we understand the consequences, but we’re not quite sure of the likelihood. And we’re now in a situation where we’re having to trade off some of that against existing risks. In my particular space or a managed fleet. We’re talking recently about social distancing, is there? Absolutely, there’s a fantastic control to prevent contagion of COVID. And that turning into the disease. One of the potential controls that was spoken with me about was single occupants in motor vehicles on the face very, very good as a risk control, definitely gonna control the spread of contagion. However, we also know that the most dangerous activity in the Australian workplace is driving motor vehicles. So in our increasing our exposure there, so we had a really interesting conversation around What’s that? What’s the arbitrage or the risk? If we’re going to take on more? Can we manage that? Because by introducing a control to control contagion, we’re actually eroding our control and road safety. So we need to consciously manage the bias. That’s the advantage that companies in industrialized settings have in this situation.

Murray Guest  16:29

Yeah, yeah, that’s, uh, yeah, I think that perspective of, Okay, we’re going to implement a control. And let’s think about what the impact of that control is. And does that introduce greater risk of flow on effect, the ripple effect, that may be an organization’s that’s not used to doing that would be unaware of. 

Chris Dhu  16:49

And this is where leadership starts to starts to move into risk management in the way that the world is in a vacuum. With that particular example, there is going to be situations where it makes sense to single person operate motor vehicles, because we will be able to control the existing risk in another way. However, that’s not going to be applicable everywhere. And this is where the leadership comes in that we need. We need people that are committed to our, to our vision, to our purpose, understand our values, understand what we’re trying to achieve. So we can make really great decisions on the fly in the moment that address the specifics and the contextual setting. Because the world isn’t a vacuum. Yeah, that risk leadership is sort of arrived. That’s a term that maybe it should be can see, here’s something that I think that’s the advantage of working in those in those high risk environments is much more comfortable in making those decisions and balancing, likelihood, consequences, outcomes and controls.

Murray Guest  17:56

So Mike, tell me, what’s something out of COVID-19. And the changes to ways of working that you want to make sure continues going forward?

Chris Dhu  18:09

I’ve been asked this question a couple of times, right. There’s 1000s and 1000s of micro things, which is a good way of avoiding that question. The I’ve, for quite some time, I am quite innovative, I do like to move around. I’m quite social. I do I do pride myself on being very mobile, hyper mobile, to use a term. That’s even myself, I’ve found I’ve had to click that for COVID It’s ironic that we’re a stay at home. We’re a stay at home as a principal and here I’m talking about being more mobile. It’s quite ironic, but I think being more agile is an in that being able to work is what we do not where we are is the piece that I’d love to see a part of it. The other the other piece, I think, is that now more than ever, I’ve never been a massive fan of the term work life balance. Primarily because I’m conscious that me saying that comes across quite negative. The reason I, let me turn that constructive. The reason I’m not I’m not happy with work life balance is because it immediately puts the two at odds. Which is, it essentially introduces a silo that doesn’t need to be there, you know, so me and my partner are talking about going through some changes now. And we’re talking about one of the things that particularly for me, that work is me is intellectual stimulus. And if I lose that, that’s going to that’s going to cause us a significant heart ache because I’m going to turn that intellectual knee towards our life may be different. So I think from that perspective, it’s actually blurred that line. It’s made it so blurry that it’s better I like that. Now we’re talking about life and power. What we do is work part of what we do is leisure part of what we do is sleep and all of a sudden, we’re getting better at actually making it homogenous.

Murray Guest  20:10

I agree with you because I feel like it that old saying, and we’re not the only one saying it, that work life balance is saying your life happens outside of work. And work is this thing. You have to, you know, begrudgingly do day in day out. And you know, thank God, it’s Friday, you’ve got it done. And then you can live your life, which that’s no way to live the other five days of the week.

Chris Dhu  20:33

Absolutely. And I think its really cool, especially having this conversation is a really deep reflective conversation with some of my team earlier this week, around alignment, your alignment to my wife, and Murray, you’ve heard me say I say this, I join a purpose, I don’t join a company. That’s, that’s my overwhelming motto. And we’re talking around the way when someone’s really committed to a purpose. And, and where it’s really hard, but having that extrinsic motivation, and we’re committed to a purpose. And when someone gets really committed, they can actually wind up starting to sacrifice some of their own welfare, wellness, welfare, whatever, financial could be anything. That’s actually that’s actually a sign of someone burning white hot. And it’s a it’s a short pass. So we’re having a really good conversation around how do we balance the intrinsic or self worth for self growth against the greater the greater girdle the extrinsic purpose, making sure, if it’s, if it’s 100% intrinsic, that’s someone that’s that’s likely got a value set that’s misaligned with the team or the company. If it’s someone that’s overly community company, then they’re likely going to burn white hot, and there may be some some damage being done that we’re unaware of this sort of if you can imagine as a spectrum of 100 to zero somewhere in the middle is the right answer. And yeah, and it’s our job as leaders to make sure that we’re balancing that so that we get a long term so that you know, they could the career, the the employee lifecycle is maximized, you know, that that’s the piece. So it’s a really cool discussion. And I think, what’s happening COVID will allow us to do that better, because now we’re not talking about business and personal work and life being separate, separate things that are in constant competition.

Murray Guest  22:20

I am seeing that, and I’m seeing that how people are thinking about people, again, as people not that they weren’t before, but it’s just come to the fore even more, you know, you’ve got people having zoom calls and online meetings, inviting people to their house in ways that they hadn’t before. And there’s this openness, and they are, you’re a real person, I want to make sure that you’re okay, going forward, and I care about you. And I think you’re right, it sort of brought that out even stronger, which is really powerful.

Chris Dhu  22:53

Yeah it’s splendid, the support network that’s around employee. That’s around a friend. Yeah, I think of, I now know, the support network around some of my best friends a lot better than I say, friend as colleague because to me, the word friend and colleague isn’t changeable. It’s not, there’s not so I now know, their support network. I knew the professional support network. Now I know the home support network a lot better. And we’re more open about it is just more open. It’s ironic that we’re more open about it. When we’re socially separated, together, it’s sort of counterintuitive, but it’s really great.

Murray Guest  23:32

Yeah, and I mean, I was asking you what you what you think is one of the good things out of COVID to continue. And I love what you’ve talked about with agility and that flexibility and that mobility. I’m thinking also about if I had another word that hopefully rhymes is vulnerability. I think that that has increased through this process, that openness.

Chris Dhu  23:54

Yeah, and and it builds trust. That’s the piece. That’s the piece there that that we talk we talk about humans and ultimately humans are fallible and ironically an expert is someone that’s, that’s just made collective certifies in a particular field. Yet we find it really hard to talk about them. And certainly that’s, that’s something that I feel we, through COVID we’ve gotten better at which has allowed us to build better levels of trust. That’s not not happening everywhere. But it certainly is moving in the right direction. And that would be my only caution with this topic is we don’t want to wind up in a situation where we have pockets of excellence. We need to make sure that the virtual rooms that this this creative growth is happening are connected, if that makes sense. And the virtual rooms are now now even less visible. Ifthat make sense? Youqnd I could be talking on on this particular zoom call and then after this zoom call you can be talking to someone in Western Australia could be talking to someone in New Zealand or somewhere in different parts of the world.

Murray Guest  25:05

Yep. 

Chris Dhu  25:06

We haven’t visibly left. So making that would go on in the caution with this with the with the increase in understanding of each other the increase the improving, or the increasing vulnerability, the increase improving trust, making sure that that’s actually across to the best extent we can across the board and not areas of, of hyper growth that are inadvertently leaving other areas behind. Because when we do come back together, and whatever the new normal is, as much as that’s the new normal, I don’t think is ever going to be settled. Yeah, that could be quite the stock, the stock sort of reality, restart of social dynamics and will require shock to the system. So let’s make sure we do that really smart.

Murray Guest  25:54

Yeah, and I’m actually thinking how important it is around the alignment of leaders. So that there is that alignment about how we are working now and what that looks like going forward. So that communication, that understanding that agreement, or in that alignment, so that that brings along a level of understanding and implementation in whatever that new normal looks like.

Chris Dhu  26:20

Alignment of leaders is really interesting, outside of behavioural alignment, so beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, alignment, that should absolutely be something we’re working on every single day and, having courageous conversations if it’s not there, because the problem certainly doesn’t get better with age. Or what I’m seeing is there’s a lot better alignment around our use of our use of attention and I called it out at the start, I’m not a massive fan of the word busy. And there’s a bit of contextual setting required here. Take it give it time is a really, really easy thing to measure, arguably one of the easiest metrics in the world and that makes that things are easy to measure tend to get measured. And ironically, some of the software platforms that we use consistently in business, Ie outlook are designed to be very sticky, they make it make it feels good to manage your time and feels like we’re achieving something. I’m also consciously aware that if I take give it give it time, 10 hours, or 10 hour block, for example, I don’t have 10 hours of attention, I can’t be present for 10 hours, I’m gonna weigh in, in and out and so very conscious with where I place my attention. And I’m very conscious whenever I’m sort of looking at how my day is gonna play out, for example, this this particular zone, very high intellectual load, very high attention requirement. The activities I’m doing in the side of that, I would deliberately, deliberately make sure therefore information or I’ll be clear with people that I’m within virtual rooms. In this case, I’m just coming out of a really intense session. So I’m here and I’m cool to have a light chat but lets park any heavy stuff.

Murray Guest  28:06

I hope this isn’t too heavy for you.

Chris Dhu  28:08

It’s enjoyble, it’s enjoyable. But I think that’s that’s the piece that’s gonna be really interesting, as we as we graph back to hearing locations, again, is how do we better manage the tension, because time is a really poor proxy for and I think this has been given that there’s been some level of standardization, ie we’re all looking at a camera or a monitor at the moment. We’ve essentially sat established a control. So now everyone’s having to think a little bit more about attention and how it relates to time. Because we’re all not moving. We’re all now doing largely same activities sitting in chair looking, standing looking. It’d be really interesting to see how that conversation evolves, as we move back into office environments, and sorry, co located situations. How do we how do we maintain that focus of, of let’s not manage time anymore? Let’s manage our attention and refining  our attention to

Murray Guest  29:05

Yeah, and I think you’ve mentioned courageous conversations a couple of times. And I like to think they are happening more at the moment. People are having these conversations because they need to, and that they continue in the new world, where it’s like, okay, where did where’s the attention at? Where is it not? And having that, and not just slipping back into old habits, which weren’t serving was very time measured.

Chris Dhu  29:31

I think you and I have discussed the the, the book, it’s it’s The Manager, it’s and it’s its posture of managers to coaches, I think is a term I have the terminology wrong.

Murray Guest  29:45

No you’re spot on. Yep.

Chris Dhu  29:46

The I think there’s a really there’s a really, when we hear the term managers to coaches really easy to go towards coaches being highly, highly motivated, highly motivating individual and that absolutely, it’s true. I think of the best coaches that I’ve worked for both in a professional setting personal and sporting settings. They are very motivational individuals, and they draw their motivation from absolutely, absolutely a commitment to a higher purpose, a vision, a objective is forging code, it might be the winning of something, for example, in a personal setting, it might be some sort of life life goal. A really important piece of that of being inspirational and demonstrating commitment to undying purpose for what a better way is to show and to absolutely show when an expectation isn’t met. And to make sure that that’s clear. That that’s really important to do. And it’s something that I think the professional world or use the word I think they’re with intent think your professional world has grappled with a lot, too, we tend to jump straight towards transactional management, ie X amount of widgets per hour, as opposed to behavioral and belief type management. Yeah, really kind of see that stay, to stay. Because at the end of the day, if we if we’re managing, we can’t act our way into a belief we can’t act our way into an attitude that absolutely has to be intrinsic can call. That’s I’m really keen to say that particularly stay into the into the New World, we’ve had to transition without with a with a new operating model. We’re now there’s a lot less colocation, there’s a lot less oversight. So we’re now relying on people’s intrinsic motivation. A lot more. Yeah, we’re now realizing we have to manage it, we have to own it, we have to understand we have to talk about that. So we need to transition that back to the work environment, when the transactional measures can be done better. That doesn’t mean we go back to them, if that makes sense. Literally, like the whole times easier to measure, therefore it gets measured.

Murray Guest  31:59

Yeah, of course. The paper I just want to add to this element, too, is we talk about manager to coach, I like people to think about coach like, so if you think about the attributes and the behaviors of a coach, asking questions, Unlocking Potential being really present, helping someone support their development. I think that’s what this is about, too. So how to managers leaders do more of that. And bring those ways of working and ways of being that a coach does into their management practice.

Chris Dhu  32:34

Yeah, yeah, I think and as far as that coach, like, could also add the the road mapping types here, I want to use Word planning, but that that forward looking, certainly conversation that we’re having a lot within within the leadership team that I’m a member of at moment is around where we’re now transitioning into winter, in Australia. We’re talking Yeah, we’re now seeing shorter days, we’re seeing colder weather that has a significant impact year on year, on top of influenza and everything else that comes with that. I see a significant mental impact year on year. That means it’s going to be amplified this year. So what the one, the one thing we do have in our at our disposal now is time, and we must use it wisely. Because if we don’t, once again, this probably isn’t gonna give it this probably isn’t gonna get better with it. So let’s talk about now let’s make sure we’ve got active strategies. Now that strategy may just be as simple as raising a conversation allowing people giving the people the freedom within a framework to actually solve it. Or it could be something more didactic or transactional I don’t know, but at least important things we start the conversation. And to me, that’s, that’s a coach’s role. That’s that piece that we need to be asking the right questions to make sure that we’re setting up setting up for success. Yeah. And equally, you know, that requires a really open and transparent relationship with with the teams that if we’re seeing something doesn’t quite sound right for them quite as well, right? Hey, this good chimes let’s rise. And let’s let’s talk about

Murray Guest  34:14

Now I want to just wrap that up, because want to move on to some other topic. But I think what you’re also reminding me of something I’ve picked up in the positive change through COVID-19. And that’s been a more frequent focus communication, with leaders with teams, where previously it might have been Let’s wait for a period of time to have a meeting and then we’ll discuss it but where what I’m seeing from the good leadership practices, we’re talking more frequently more focused, and people find that really valuable. So it’s giving that that more regular and frequent conversation.

Chris Dhu  34:53

Yeah, and old ads that no more frequent and more focus but also more topical, as well. Now saying, particularly I think of mine, my world, I can now I can now attend a meeting in three or four different parts of New South Wales, with three or four different teams in rapid succession where historically, I would have relied on being there in person, potentially. 

Murray Guest  35:20

Yeah, gotcha.

Chris Dhu  35:20

That’s that that means that I can now deliver a much more focused conversation because I’m now walking from one team or silo walking from one team to another, and delivering a very focused message because I’m still on that topic. But it’s also a topical message, I’m able to get that information to to that team faster. So that half life of communications really should slow down. So get information out as quickly as possible.

Murray Guest  35:57

Yeah. All right. I’m going to try something with you. Here we go. Some rapid fire questions. 

Chris Dhu  36:03

Okay. 

Murray Guest  36:04

Let’s see how you go. What is values based leadership?

Chris Dhu  36:11

Values based leadership is commitment to a common purpose and alignment of personal and extrinsic goes.

Murray Guest  36:20

Ooh, you’ve done well, to answer that one in such a short fashion, because I know how passionate you are about values. 

Chris Dhu  36:26

You remember so? 

Murray Guest  36:28

Fantastic. Now, tell me when you say and I’ve heard this quote from you before? I don’t know what report I need till I see it. Tell me what that one means. 

Chris Dhu  36:41

Yeah, reporting is really, really interesting in so many different ways. I’m sort of answer your question with an example of a brief period of my career where I spent some time in a in a BA role. And I was I was taught by a very good friend of mine, that a really good bi one, once again, to go back to values based leadership understands, understands what needs to be done, it acts in a very ethical way ethical and aligned to, to the objective to the common objective. That means the VA can quite often understand what needs to be done, and how to get there. And for exactly, yeah, that could in this particular situation, I was doing some stuff around maintenance, maintenance analytics, and there was some things that didn’t quite seem right. For example, sugar compliance was was the standard deviation to compliance was incredibly narrow, which, you know, if you think of a traditional maintenance managers perspective, you know, the maintenance manager is likely likely to thumbs up, to thumbs up moving forward type thing, as in that roles are bi and having experienced, you know, minus managers role was actually seen. That doesn’t sound right. We need more Dean. As a result, by acting with that with values and ethically ethically aligned behavior, I was actually I will try and cover some some anomalies in which way that so there was, there was ways we could manage better manage the department better. And I was able to present that to the maintenance manager and say, Hey, I know, I know, the headline number looks okay. But there’s some stuff in here that we can do better. Now that that particular maintenance manager at that point in time came to the assault, but didn’t even know they’d say that. Yeah, gotcha. That in three years, you think of that, that’s where a statistician, a statistician starts to make that step into into that analyst will the leadership world, we’re able to improve that departments performance. And what what that actually short story, what that actually uncovered was, was some stuff around system, the system was very, very hard to use. And so as a result, attainment team and figured out ways to use it, that that actually will enable them to deliver what they needed on a daily basis. But it didn’t, it didn’t actually, it didn’t help the engineering team actually improve the assets while maintaining. So it turned out it was actually a system driving behavior rather than behavior driving system. So but I think if if we had if we had someone in that role that had basically delivered on the requirement of the maintenance manager, which was I need to see show your compliance data improve, it would have never happened. Yeah. And so that’s where that saying comes from. And it’s amazing how often you when I sit with my own team, and we might start with a question, and it might be Yeah. What’s our What’s our risk profile in relation to incident incidents involving crimes? That might be the question and that could take you down 25 different reporting ones, which which reporting line you go down is really important and that’s heavily recorded. On one side.

Murray Guest  40:01

So first bit of feedback, rapid fire questions are out the window. And that’s, that’s okay. Because I love it when you give me this, this data, this information is insight. And I love how you linked the BA role and I don’t know what report I need to I set back to values based leadership and creating a culture of values love and trust. Because as a BA, you couldn’t have done that if you were trusted and empowered.

Chris Dhu  40:29

And absolutely in this this, trust and trust is such an important word and is it’s commonly used, seldom understood would be, would be the way I’d term trust that it had trust and trust has to be it’s obviously a genuine, genuine attribute. And if you’ve got it, it’s just the glue that makes things work. And you don’t know, don’t know why things are working, but they just work. And then when it’s not there, it just feels like it feels like a big gearbox. And none of that none of the gears are sticking together, you know, it’s just grinding all day long. That’s what it feels like that that particular that particular example that team that I was a part of. We we had we enjoyed fantastic success. But when I’m when I think back to town with a smile on my face. Now when I think back to that time, the success we enjoyed wasn’t in the form of financial returns to the business or anything, anything of that nature, the success we enjoyed was actually working more by having a really trusting and open relationship and having that that framework and the freedom to work within Tyler, it drove up all of our engagement, we were actually committed to the to the common theme we were there to do. And as a result, we’re all highly engaged. We all enjoyed working with each other things just started to click and people are removed at a time we would have people come and speak to us and say, Oh, you know how it has it’s working. So well. Why do you think this works? so well? And none of us would answer the question was as an artist, and I think that comes back to that trust base was knowing what I know now or my answer would have been?

Murray Guest  42:08

Yeah, yeah. Great. I’m going to give you another test, though, on the rapid fire questions, mate, where we’ve got a little little bit more time. So my question is around, if you could articulate the role of leadership, and successful culture transformation. If you could pass on, you know, a couple of tips, let’s just say two tips to someone to a leader who’s listening to the podcast, if you really want to lock in cultural, cultural transformation. You know, what, what would you say those key tips for a leader? Well, I’m trying to think of two, you can go one or 50.

Chris Dhu  42:58

Easily 50. The first one would be don’t understate it, I just don’t understate it. The transformations that I’ve been involved with, it’s very easy to get caught up in the strategy development. Really easy to for that to happen. And largely because strategy development is is very rewarding, equally for myself. So it’s a bit of self feedback when you get caught up here as well. We’ve all heard we’ve all heard the sayings in culture eats strategy for breakfast is one of the most common ones. Once again, it’s around my ear not real for you. It’s when we’re when we’re looking at a strategy and we’re saying, Hey, we want to go, we want to we want to head in this direction. We want to take this hill really sit down and understand. Okay, well, what is a cool quote, culture look like to take that hill? And obviously there’s going to be there’s going to be overarching, which is what we all need to know why we’re doing it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I would add to that, every individual needs to know why taking the hills important for them as well, that goes to that, that piece around intrinsic extrinsic motivation. So it’s a why, why for me, type thing. And then there’s all the other little pieces that go around it. What are we, if we, if we’re aiming to increase our cadence, for example, to go to go after that goal in the short term? What’s the backside of that require it we can’t sustainably increase cadence unless we make structural meaningful change. If we if we increase our cadence and we don’t make change, all we’re doing is driving everything harder and driving everything harder. Obviously, shaunc shortens the life cycle. So when you start talking about doing that with humans, obviously engagement falls off and return rates for the meaningful measures going the wrong direction. So making it Real making the car what when? How does the cultural I personally I like to start with a bit of a bit of discussion dialogue, type stuff with with key key team members, key stakeholders, I like to use the toy, my go to tool is a cultural web, I’ll put that up on a wall with a whole bunch of sticky notes. And so right over there with our rituals for examining its rituals, control structures is one of them. Routines is another symbols isn’t a sticky note, or it’s a symbol. So we want to say, Yeah, for example, if we’re, if if we’re say cleaning, a large turnaround of an industrial facility, or structure might be very important for that, because that’s a critical requirement. When you’re running your turnaround, we’re going to structure with hard with hard start and finish type things. Or we might have hard roll guides. That’s an important symbol, for example, that that start, you start to pick up all these all these things in touch and hold my starter if they can’t, is that consistent with the culture or build a culture? If they’re if they’re inconsistent with the culture, they wrote it? So that’s a really cool tool, right? And then, and then you start to refine that down into into a brand. Yeah, I’d say brand is probably better terms for that. But what are we who are we in certainly in the team that I’m leading now, we sell on the three words of resourcefulness, initiative, and professionalism. That’s what we are. So, for example, if you think of a, if you think of a routine, think of a ritual for professionalism, it may be preserved, but we don’t move our leadership team timeslots, we leave them where they are. And if we can’t, if we can’t make it for whatever reason, we provide a really good, it’s mutually shared accountability, we provide a really good reason to the entire team, not the leader to the entire team on why and we do that using different communication methods. But that’s, that’s important, because we are professional.

Murray Guest  46:59

And links back to your point earlier about, then they’re not just words, what do they actually look like? How do we how do we know how we’re going to hold each other mutually accountable? What are those behaviors that go with it? Mate, I’m mindful of our time. That’s, you know, getting close to 50 minutes has been fantastic. And we haven’t even touched on strengths, something I’m passionate about. And I know you are. So that’ll be conversation number two, I’d say. 

Chris Dhu  47:24

Very good. 

Murray Guest  47:25

Plus a bunch of other stuff I’m sure we could talk about. I want to thank you, mate. Thank you so much for your openness, your insight, the the perspective you bring to leadership and culture, and even the openness and sharing upfront around the experiences you’ve had in the past, you know, six months as a team and a business, and what that’s been like, and what’s that shown and some of those lessons out of that. So I know that was really valuable for everyone listening. So thank you so much. Thanks for thanks for the opportunity. And I look forward to continuing the conversation. We will now you can’t get away with giving me your definition of inspired energy. You have given me one beforehand, which are going to be honest, I absolutely love it. But I’ll put you on the spot and see if you can remember what you said or what what comes to mind right now.

Chris Dhu  48:16

In the spirit of openness and honesty, I can’t remember what I said the first time inspired energy. I was immediately on the spot right now and say inspired energy. It’s a form of energy that’s unlocked. It’s unlocked by commitment to a greater purpose. And it’s an apparent obviously it has the purpose has to be aligned with your own with your own personal values and your own personal goals.

Murray Guest  48:50

That’s pretty spot on to what you said. 

Chris Dhu  48:55

Consistent.

Murray Guest  48:56

That is it consistent it is. Again, thanks so much. Can I just ask anyone listening, If you got something out of this conversation, don’t hesitate to share it online. We’d love to know what you found out of this. We feel like we’ve covered a lot lots of great insights from Chris from his leadership, perspective and, and journey and, again, Chris, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, mate. Keep well keep healthy and I’ll talk to you soon. 

Chris Dhu  49:21

Thanks mate.