How managers spark innovation with experiential learning

Gary: You've got a goal, you've got the energy, and you're directed, but maybe you feel there's something missing from it. That's a great place to start. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but what I do know for sure is the more other-oriented your goal is, the more in service of a a higher cause that you can be.
Jimmy: Welcome back to the Ways of Working Podcast, your weekly dose of practical tips for senior leaders who are looking for a performance edge without burning themselves or their teams out.
Today, we are joined by Gary Armstrong, founder and coach at Pinnacle Coaching and Development. Gary, hi. Welcome.
Gary: Thanks Jimmy. Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Jimmy: Amazing. I say this nearly every episode, but I am genuinely excited to have you on the show and to talk about some of the exciting activities, wins and now opportunities that you are creating in your world. But I want to start off by going back a little bit in your career to your time at GSK, GlaxoSmithKline. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing in the Future Strategy Group because it just looks really interesting to pay attention to.
Gary: Yeah. Thank you. That was a really amazing part of my career. And I can say that because I didn't create the Future Strategy Group. I came upon it. Actually, went through it as a participant, and then I had the privilege of going back and running this truly unique thing at GSK. So GlaxoSmithKline and many people, I'm sure, will know it's a large global pharmaceutical healthcare organization, really fantastic company. And within it, at the heart of it, for a few years, it had this thing called the Future Strategy Group, and if you hear me say FSG during this conversation, it's just because Future Strategy Group is such a mouthful. And the Future Strategy Group, the FSG, it was amazing. It started, I think, in about 2010 under the former CEO, Sir Andrew Witty, and it looked like, from the outside, it looked like a disruptive think tank in the office of the CEO. So it was kind of badged as being a place where people came on a secondment to take on a difficult, ambiguous strategic question and come up with the novel, unusual, challenging, breakthrough kind of recommendations to tackle that question, that issue, that opportunity. The thing that it was less obviously from the outside was it was an incredible experiential leadership development program. So it was both things kind of really wrapped in together, and I had the pleasure of going through this thing in as a participant back in initially 2012, stayed close to the the the folks that that ran it, and then had the chance to come back and work on it, be the person that held the group together and steered it for probably about four years or so. It was a truly amazing thing, Jimmy.
Jimmy: I want to dig into that a little bit more, because you mentioned two key pieces there: disrupting strategy and disruptive force, and leadership development. And for our listeners who are interested in what's that little performance edge that I can gain, or how can I dial up our our business results by approaching leadership in a different way, tell us a little bit about some of the things that were going on in the FSG and how did you combine leadership development and strategy disruption, or strategy innovation, should I say?
Gary: Yeah. No, absolutely. It still makes me smile, it's a super curious thing. A few things I'd say about it, is it it had a very this sort of very specific mission and remit, and it had all sorts of permissions around it, in that you often hear that if you want to create a subculture, and it definitely was its own subculture inside the organization, you kind of have to incubate it slightly, and that was definitely going on with the FSG. What It was full of all sorts of paradoxes though, Jimmy, in that you had this disruptive group, which had permission to take a sideways look at some of the big issues, but it was right at the heart of the company in some ways. And actually, that's a little bit arrogant, because I don't necessarily think the heart of any company is the office of the CEO, because actually the heart might be your sales force or the your heart might be in R&D or in manufacturing, the people on the front line, the heart could be absolutely everywhere, but maybe if I say kind of in the center of the company, arguably, where you'd be most surprised to find some people displaying very counter-cultural behaviors, etc. But it had definitely had that permission kind of for people to come in to think and act differently. It was a place with a bit of investment. So, just to demystify it a bit, people would come, when I describe it, it's going to kind of maybe blow some people's minds, people would leave their their day job, their role, come into the Future Strategy Group for a 6-month period. It was incredibly diverse, so there were cohorts of about 12 people. These folks were coming from everywhere in the GSK world, everywhere in the world, big kind of deliberate slice across the value chain, across nations, across personality types, everything, everything. I guess what people had in common there were they were all on the cusp of breaking through to sort of big, major leadership positions, so many people going from there into senior director roles, VP roles, ultimately, SVP roles, etc. So it had that permission, it had some investment, had huge amounts of diversity in it, and we paid an enormous amount of attention to how we inducted each cohort, how we set each group up, how we sort of set that culture, and what the norms were within the Future Strategy Group, what we expected in terms of how people behave, what they did and didn't do, what was normal in terms of how they interacted with one another and the rest of the organization, the expectations we set around the strategy project that they had, so people were organized into groups of three. We found out three was a magic number for a future for an FSG team, just enough scale to get some work done, but a kind of nice, uneven, unstable number. You can't you can't split 50/50 in a group of three, but a perfect number as well to support each other as they developed. And I'd probably the last bit of the culture that I would say was really pivotal was that it was understood that right from the get-go as you were selected for this, as you were inducted into this, yeah, you had a a project to deliver on, but we expected you to come in to invest in yourself and in changing and that it would be, I think the language we used and I would still use is a deep, uncomfortable at-times journey. Not always uncomfortable, there's a lot of fun that was had, but it was very
Jimmy: Like peeling an onion.
Gary: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and we sort of set that up from the get-go and even from the selection process. People frequently enjoyed the selection process, but also found it in and of itself an insightful an insightful thing. And in fact, our aim always was if we didn't select someone, that the selection process was useful for them. They would know why it wasn't the right thing for for them, in our opinion, at the right time and what else we would suggest they did to develop, take their career on, move through the organization, etc. So yeah, it was a a high level of intentionality, Jimmy, and how we set up the culture, the way of being there and and what we expected of the people in the group.
Jimmy: So many questions. Could talk for hours on this. A couple of things that I wanted to dig into, though. The first one was around the behaviors and the culture of the FSG. So you're essentially taking high-perceived-potential employees or people who have got the potential to be senior leaders in the organization, presumably, they were demonstrating some of the cultural traits and behavioral traits that you wanted from senior leaders, but you still needed to put them through this intensive process. What were you specifically bringing in, and what were you specifically molding during the time they were with the FSG?
Gary: Yeah. If I had I'll describe some of what it looks like at a more detailed level, I think what we were really building in the folks that came in was the capacities to be much more conscious as leaders of what they were doing and how they were doing it. So it it probably felt in induction a little bit like a shock and awe experience, because we were really things like very early on, we emphasized enormously the power of listening. We would do a session on what we would call advocacy versus inquiry and sort of just alerting the the the people in the group to the balance with which they were spending their lives. How much were they advocating their view versus really, really, deeply listening and appreciating the views of other people, what was going on and listening on the deepest possible level that they could to what's going on around them, to the organization, to themselves. So that's just an example of kind of the the conscious real sort of it was a real blessing to work on it, honestly. Sort of penny-drop moments for people around, "Oh crikey, I I hadn't really realized that I had this pattern of being and and, for example, not listening deeply as deeply as I could." We cultivated in the group an enormous capacity for self-reflection on the individuals, not just on I've I've used listening as an example, but the capacity to kind of break that cycle, if you like, that we're all in, of having experiences, those experiences having an impact on us, and maybe not reflecting on, "Well, what happened there? How did I show up? What sense was I making of that situation? How did that drive my behavior?" What we really try to do was provide a real whole host of vehicles to interrupt that: deeper reflection, deeper understanding of what are my beliefs and values that I'm holding here as a leader, which of those are helping me in accelerating me, what which of those have got me to where I am, and which of those might I want to just take a step back from and say, "Actually, if I'm going to realize my fullest potential, the mission of the organization, that thing that I care about, which of those do I maybe need to reassess and and think about how I can go about kind of doing this this differently?"
The other thing that really stands out when I think back on it, when we did it well, and by the by we, there were three of us, there was me as head of program, we had a resident performance coach, and there were a few of those over the years. I worked with two myself and there were four in total, and we had somebody who worked on operations, so it's quite a significant. None of us were 100% full time, we all had other gigs in the office of the CEO, but we all dedicated an enormous amount of time to FSG. When The other thing that we did, back to the behaviors and the culture, we were able to create in this micro-climate a culture of vulnerability and openness across the group, and it was astonishing to see it evolve really, really quite quickly. We had a 3-week intensive induction where we gradually took people through a sequence of of activities, experiences, etc. And and underlying that was the building of, the term psychological safety wasn't quite so widely popularized back when I was working on it, but now I recognize it as at its best, and it wasn't always at its best, a place of real open psychological safety for people, high interpersonal trust and the willingness to take that interpersonal risk in a group.
Gosh Jimmy, I could keep going on, because I haven't really talked about the the performance side of it so much as well. There's a whole element to the fact that these guys were all achievers, they all had a project to do, they all were leaning hard into that, and what we did to kind of support that as well, that's a whole, maybe we can go there, I don't know.
Jimmy: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think you you talked about some beautiful concepts, though. The idea of stripping away some of the behaviors that may have got them to where they are, but in order to transition to the next thing, they needed to take some deep moments of self-reflection and to really look at themselves and the way they acted and interacted as leaders in order to move to that next stage of being. It's almost like a transcendent moment when you move from that senior leader to the executive role, or from leader to senior leader, there's things you have to let go of and shed. Part of what you did, you said you put them into teams of three, and you glossed over a little bit where you said, you know, it's the magic number and you can't stack an argument if there's three people, but why was three such a critical number and how did that have a positive effect on the leadership, because I know from, obviously, my military background, three is a critical number in in organizational structures, as well. So what what was it about the three that was magic?
Gary: Yeah, I guess that you we can sort of tick off one and two, because as that kind of on your own you don't get you can go fast, but you can't go far, and all of that. Two, you almost, we we did have a few teams of two, particularly towards the end of the program, for a few reasons. You lack a little bit of the critical mass to get things done, the ability to specialize, just in terms of the almost pragmatically, the amount of work to be done on a project, two people is is quite hard, but you also really lack diversity of thought in that way. Once you get to three, all of your conversations get a whole lot more interesting. You go in from two to three, you add in a whole 50% more life experience, world view. You've got all the different dynamics that can kind of go on in in that space. As I said, it can be like a stable, you've got three legs on your stool at that point, you've got some stability, but also at the same time, it's great for decision making, you can't split it down the middle. Once we found we got to four, and we never really went above four, we found that almost occasionally, the fourth person became a little bit spare sometimes. You could either step back or I don't want to say hide, because that's sort of impugning the motives of the people in in the group, but when there's only three of you, there's nowhere to hide in the conversation. You can't step back, you can't not take that responsibility. And there was some very deliberate sort of developmental heat put under these folks, and we just found that that trio just allowed that right level of trust, diversity, scale, all of those things. And once it went over, you started to sort of get a little bit thing step back. And I think there's that great sort of research that says, I think, once a group hits five, or is it six or something, it starts to splinter, the you can't have a conversation with more than four people or five people. It sort of starts to splinter, and and I think that's what we found.
Jimmy: It becomes a committee at that point.
That's amazing. And so let's go to the performance and the results of the FSG. What sort of things were the outcomes that you were particularly proud of from creating this essentially senior leadership incubator? What What were the things that it was producing? What were the things that came up that you stand back and look at as this was a really high-impact activity?
Gary: Yeah. I over I mean, as a people development professional, I would, apart from the projects, and I'll come back to the projects in a moment, the the way the people changed, the way we were able to develop the leaders that then went back into the organization, each carrying that experience with them and that different way of being, just a I just a huge achievement. Great alumni network from that. And if I just put that in sort of strategic and performance terms, for the organization, the part of the reason why the group existed was to generate some wider culture change in GSK, to promote a different way of being, to promote a more disruptive, innovative sort of culture, if you like, to take that performance mindset back into the business. So I really don't want to overlook kind of like the meta-achievement of the group itself as a thing and making that happen. And we had a a sister program in the Asian Asia-Pacific business, which ran slightly differently, but had equally similar impact on the folks out there and is still running. The projects themselves were, and I'll be super honest, and anyone who worked on FSG will tell you, we had some great hits in this. We had some some particularly also some of the early teams, some of the really big, thorny strategic issues that Andrew Witty was putting into the organization like, how does GSK tackle neglected tropical diseases? What's the how should we go about tackling that? Commercial challenges that we were facing in China, for example, and how do we This is a while back. How do we commercialize and run our business in China? Future of animals in research, in medical research, and what's GSK's stand and position on that? I was part of a team that worked on real-world data, which was becoming quite a significant thing, so kind of using clinical information from the real world, etc. We also started to tackle a lot of internal questions, so we the one of the platforms that's widely in use in GSK now is Workplace by Facebook. So essentially the internal social media platform, that was an FSG recommendation. So I can kind of look and see lots and lots of causes and and challenges that the organization had about how it met the outside world and how it did its internal work. Those two constant big struggles for any big organization, meeting the external challenge, staying internally integrated. And the FSG, it was fantastic. We used to go and ask the top leadership team, "What are the big problems that you've got that you'd like an FSG team to work on?" And one of the things that each FSG project did, whether all of the recommendations were taken up or not, was to always bring energy, coherence, heat, and light on that particular issue and push it forward, because sometimes, you know, it can take an enormous amount to make a a significant change in an organization, and some of the problems that the FSG were thrown were these big, long, intractable problems that have been around for a while, had multiple players and constituents, so the FSG was able to use things like organization development techniques and run big workshops to get a lot of the right people in the room on the same page and sort of shove the boulder one big step forward in a way that maybe it hadn't done before. So I think there's a lot, so many of those projects, I think, that people look back on, they're really proud of the impact that they had, and people will be able to see structures of the organization or commercial practices or ways of being that are in the organization that the FSG, if it didn't directly cause them, it massively accelerated them. Do you know, I wish it had been around as we'd been tackling the pandemic, the all the future-of-work challenges that we're addressing now, the massive step forward we made in diversity, equity, and inclusion, because that those are prime topics for an FSG team to have picked up, but hey.
Jimmy: Absolutely. And I can see the pride that you have from having gone on that journey, and you briefly mentioned using organizational development techniques, and I know we've spoken about previously your interest in in neuroscience, in organizational development, in Lean Six Sigma. Can you tell us how you applied some of these amazing, what some executives may perceive to be, "Oh, that's the HR stuff," actually how you applied some of that to real business challenges and how you used that in a strategy context?
Gary: Yeah, and this is the bit where I absolutely have to take my big dose of humility, and I mentioned at the beginning that I came upon this program and it was, in many ways, conceived by others, and it was a brilliant conception. It was a real blend If I talk about it maybe in a slightly use kind of tool and framework kind of language, because there there was a a good decent amount of that. It was a real blend of all of those things that you've mentioned. So, from the world of GSK had been on itself a great journey with taking a version of Lean Six Sigma and adapting it to take it from its more traditional manufacturing context to consider how could it be used to do things like drive line of sight from problem, clear definition of problem, that kind of strategy mindset, you know, clear definition of problem through to the kind of guiding policy, what are the enablers of that policy, the tactics, and then how will we measure that, and how do we know we're winning and how do we stay true to that? Each FSG team did had its own kind of version of that that they were keeping track, you know. What is the problem that we are we're we're working on? We have some deliverables, but how do we know we're winning? How do we keep ourselves on track in that way? We borrowed a lot from Lean Six Sigma, things like the idea of gemba, the real place, go and see what's going on. So, find ways of actually being with the problem, experiencing the problem in as many different viable ways as you can to kind of collect your data and your your information and then go ahead and work with it.
Jimmy: And just for those that haven't got familiarity with that term, it's like, it's get off your seat and go down and watch where the problem or the issue is happening and understand it with the person who is doing the activity, right? It's actually being physically present to see it versus asking for reports about it from your from your ivory palace. Just to clarify for people who think, "What's gemba? That sounds strange."
Gary: I first came across the concept of gemba way back in management consulting, and the founder of the firm talked about it, and I think it means partly means crime scene, doesn't it? Or the real place in Japanese.
Jimmy: Yeah, I think it's go to where the work is done, or where the labor happens, or something like that.
Gary: Yeah. That where sort of where the action is. So FSG teams, to your point, were were out there a lot. They were, you know, it going to, you know, if the question was, how do we address nutritional challenges through the consumer health care business, how do we address nutritional challenges in parts of the developing world, they went. They were with people who were experiencing those challenges and going and kind of looking and and seeing them and and able to speak sort of authoritatively from that real experience. More in the in the OD side of things, things that we would do, a lot of those sort of OD techniques to bring together large groups, for example, and do large workshops where you're bringing together a whole kind of getting the whole system in the room and making it okay for everybody to have the dialogue and cluster around the problem, really making it a safe space for people to ideate and come up with the solution and take a giant step forward in a way that you really can't do if if if people aren't in the room together. And that's I think the FSG teams were phenomenal at at running those kind of big World Cafe-type events and and other things like that. So yeah, it was a really great kind of blend of many of these things, and the thing that a lot of that ran through it was the action coaching. So having someone who was not in any of the teams able to sort of lean into the group and kind of say, "Hey." So you might have a group, an FSG team, that's sat down and trying to do a little bit of problem solving, and the action coach might notice that they haven't specified their process. So we were very big on things like input, process, output, so SIPOC from from the world of Lean Six Sigma. What's What are your inputs? What's your process here, and what's your output? What are you trying to drive? So, you know, we would drill teams on having, "Look, if you're going to sit down even for like a half an hour meeting with each other, just have some line of sight of what you're trying to cause. What's your output? Pay that conscious attention to, what's your process?" What was going And then we would bring in the OD element, which is, okay, so you've got a process going, you might think you know that the process is the task process, so let's say the task process is brainstorming, okay, you're going to have a brainstorming idea session here where you're stating that you want as many ideas as possible to address, okay, that's the process, but don't forget there's also a group process running here, which is often covert, which is, how is everyone being with each other? Who's included, who's not included? What's the level of trust like? Who's feeling safe, who's not feeling safe? Who's everyone take Who's the leader, whether that's declared or undeclared? Who's everyone taking their cues from? Pay attention to those things, and we had the coach and myself there to bring that consciousness to the group so that they were able to sort of be at their best.
It was a very high-energy environment, by the way. Just to back to your kind of mission for what you're causing with this podcast as well, which is sort of leaders looking for an edge, one thing I definitely experienced working in the Future Strategy Group and then work being in it, and then working on it, is that it it also told me that you can't be at full speed the whole time. If when you're constantly kind of seeking to be at your best with the volume turned up to 11, you absolutely need to dial in that time, or at least I did, to rest, recuperate, take yourself, do whatever that looks like for you, because it is an intense thing being super high-performing, being with others, being super conscious of what you're doing. It gets easier the more you do it, it gets more sort of ingrained, but there's also that real importance of look after yourself, take the time that you need to, we're not interested in burning you out. I think we got better at that, actually, with the program as we went on. I think we realized that it's sure, it's 6 months, and we want you to leave no meat on the bone, as we would say, but also we don't want you exiting the program a a carcass, sort of dried-out husk of a human being.
Jimmy: I fully agree.
Gary: Yes, exactly. A carcass, you know, going back into the organisation.
Jimmy: I fully agree with you, the idea of sustainable high performance is not running at 100% all the time, it's running at 80% all the time, but that 80% is more than other people's 100, zero, 100, zero, 100, zero. And so, yeah, creating an environment in a leadership team where people aren't constantly sprinting, and we see a lot of that right now with with burnout, we're seeing a lot of leadership teams that have been sprinting since 2020, and maybe even earlier than that, if they were in the midst of something else before COVID even started, and being very conscious as a leadership group that even if you are creating something like this, which is a an energy incubator, an innovation incubator, or you're just dealing with day-to-day business problems, your executive team are probably burned out, and they're probably struggling, and that edge that you're looking for might actually be just dialing it down a notch, and giving people a little bit of time to recover. You have a very interesting hobby for recovery, and I know that you are actually pretty good at your hobby, so do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
Gary: Would this be my running? Is this what I do when I'm not doing all this stuff, is that what you mean?
Jimmy: Let's talk about how you bridge high-performance culture and running. So what have you taken from running into your work and what have you taken from work And we talked a little bit about what you've taken from work into running, but how do those two line up for you?
Gary: Things I take from running into my work, well, strangely, and I'll speak about it kind of almost me as an individual, I do find that my running helps me with my kind of personal confidence, my focus, a sense of self-efficacy, if you like, as a kind of individual. I'm able to take from my running and sort of it it's almost one of those things that helps me build my self-concept and sort of validate myself and feel, yeah, if I set my sights on a goal and I build towards it, I can absolutely achieve it. So I kind of take that as an individual. On that kind of broader level, the parallels are just enormous. I think the biggest thing that stands out and that I love about running, which reflects into the business world, is that that running is, I find, very fair. You do, generally, get out what you put in, and that includes, by the way, if you put in too much into your running, you get out an injury. There's that kind of like it's a very sort of fair thing, and I can take that from my running into work. I think the other thing that really stands out is loving the process. So, I almost get as much satisfaction from really well executed run workout. So if I'm building towards a race, I'll follow a training plan and they there are certain, you know, components of a training plan and they're developing certain capacities in you as a runner, and that being able to kind of plan that workout, go and do it, and deliver on it is almost, to me, as just intrinsically satisfying as whatever race I'm training for or whatever. And I try and bring that over into the high-performance side of things, as well, and just sort of say, "It's all building. Take enjoyment from the process. Take intrinsic joy in the fact that, you know, you took one step towards that personally meaningful goal in work, with your project team, on that thing, um that purpose that you have." I absolutely relate to that kind of coming from the running side and pulling that into work. And then there's just there's a big bit of me which is actually pretty methodical as well. I do love a plan. I do also know, and you'll know this from your background better than me, no plan survives first contact. I totally get that, but I do love a plan, and I could totally take that from my running, you know. You've got the big, hairy, audacious goal out there, let's set a plan, let's get going on it, let's take a little bit of structure, and then let's iterate it and see what happens happens from there, and and I absolutely pull those things over from the running side into kind of that high-performance work.
Jimmy: I love that. And there's a deliberate reason for my question. It was, you know, partially around using the running to sometimes help us get unstuck, and when we're stuck, sometimes we need a little bit of support. And nowadays, you've moved on from the FSG and you've set up your own business, which is sounds really interesting. It's around helping leaders get, and leaders and teams, should I say, get unstuck. So I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about where do leaders and teams get stuck first of all, then we'll move into the how do you help them do that?
Gary: A brilliant question, and it my heart absolutely goes out to anybody who feels stuck. And stuck can look like, in its simplest terms, it looks like not being able to, I would say, move forward, and that's either not knowing where to go, so that might be around goal, that might be around clarity of purpose, might be even at that kind of level of identity, so that kind of thing of, "Who am I?" Big piece that people can get stuck on, I think almost the hardest bit, is what do I want? So if I know who I am and I'm conscious of me, and our team is kind of conscious of its identity, particularly for individuals and leaders, that sort of, what do I want thing, what what cause am I aligned to? What do I want to bring about in the world, particularly if it's individuals when I work with them as on a career coaching point of view, what does good look like? How do we get out of the kind of sort of trap that we're in? So there's that sort of direction piece to it, and then there's a whole piece around, how do we make this happen? What tactics do we need to use to move forward? How can I get from knowledge of self and knowledge of team, an idea of this thing that we're seeking to cause, the the kind of the goal, the the mission, the purpose, through to, right, well, what does moving forward actually look like? How do we bring this forth? What are our performance tools? What are the ways that we can get from the blank page into kind of reality, and in some ways kind of get out of our our own way and do it tactically? Those That kind of, who am I on an individual level, who am I, what do I want, how do I make it happen, they all sound like three very selfish questions, by the way, and for me they never are selfish questions. They're always when they're answered really well, you're answering that because you're, hopefully, interested in some kind of worthy goal here, and that's a goal that's not going to be connected purely to your own egocentric drives. You want to be part of something. It's going to connect you to other people. Please don't come and approach me if your goal doesn't feel No, do approach me if your goal doesn't feel worthy, I'll help you figure out how to make your goal more worthy. Let me put it that way.
Jimmy: It's always a starting point, right? Everybody has a starting point, so it's just working and iterating it.
Gary: 100%. Yeah, if you've got a goal, you've got the energy, and you're directed, but maybe you feel there's something missing from it, that's a great place to start. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but what I do know for sure is the more other-oriented your goal is, the more in service of a a higher cause that you can be, whether that's, you know, being part of a mission-driven healthcare organization or whatever, the better set up you are for the long term.
So that's my stuff. I my heart goes out to anybody who is stuck, because I believe all human beings have got absolutely tremendous potential, so much to contribute, and it kind of breaks my heart when I feel like people aren't figuring that out for themselves. And teams of people who are dysfunctioning, how can we get you straight? How can we get you aligned? How can we get the mission clear? Let's tidy up the emotional side of this. Let's get you moving forward with some direction, clarity, purpose, and some great ways of working that keep you aligned and and on track and renewing each other. That's my stuff, Jimmy.
Jimmy: I'm excited by it, and the reason I'm excited by it is because, obviously, very aligned to to what we do. And I think there's a lot of leaders out there who are almost focusing on the complicated stuff and overlooking some of the basics. And as you say, you know, clarity of purpose, clarity of roles, clarity of expectations, clarity of team functions, and if we can get leadership teams clear on those things, actually a lot of the more complicated things almost slide into place, but if you're trying to build a house on shaky foundations, which we often see that teams don't necessarily Well, they either burnout trying to do it and hold all the pieces together, and it's kind of like spinning plates and trying to stop all the plates from dropping, or they're continuously restarting, because things have gone wrong or something hasn't quite locked into place and whatever. Have you had experience of that?
Gary: Yeah, that the thing that you said there around almost over-complicating it, and not keeping it as sort of simple as it can be. For sure, and that thing that you said about clarity of purpose, clarity of roles, the basics, almost the fundamentals will get you an enormously long way. And I've worked with a couple of teams recently where they've almost sort of started in the middle, if you like. And and that can often happen if you have a change of leader, there are some people who've been there for a while, there's an ongoing mission, there's a sort of, way we do things around here, and you can kind of start in the middle and not come back to the sort of real simple basic stuff of, let's just drop all embarrassment and pretense here and come back to, just let's all remind ourselves on what the goal is and and what we all think we're here to cause, and and how we'll sort of know we've got there. What's going well? What's not going well? Does everyone, you know, want to be on the bus, not want to be on the bus? And let's let's also kind of have that conversation, if we can. Let's do maybe a little bit of a a reset in sort of terms of the trust level and get everyone at that sort of foundation kind of clear. I've seen a number of times where particularly, as I said, around kind of leadership changes, where not doing that little sort of basic reset refresh of the fundamentals hasn't helped, and then teams can get a little bit, you know, stuck, not performing, and it doesn't need to be super complicated. That just needs to be kept as complicated as it needs to be, put it that way, but as simple as it can be.
Jimmy: Agreed, agreed. And then what we see is what you talked about at the start of the FSG part of the conversation, which is, you end up with leaders trying to just drive their own agenda and their own impetus, versus, actually, how do we work collaboratively and reflectively and supportively as a senior leadership team? So, yeah, a beautiful place to come back full circle to in our conversation.
Gary, thank you so, so much for sharing not only the wisdom of the journey you picked up with GlaxoSmithKline, but also some of the foundational work that you are able to offer teams and leaders who are out there and maybe feeling a little bit stuck and feeling like they're struggling a little bit.
If people want to reach out to you, get in touch, and contact you, what's the best way of doing that?
Gary: Yeah, there's a few easy ways. I think, always, as particularly at this stage, they can find me on LinkedIn, so there'll be a few Gary Armstrongs, I'm sure, but I'll be the only one who's at Pinnacle Coaching and Development. Can visit the website, that's pinnaclecoaching.net, and you can also just email me directly at [email protected]. It's all the different ways you can find me, and yeah, don't hesitate to reach out, because, as we've talked about in this conversation, so much energy to give people who are in those situations, and I'm part of a broad network of people similar to yourself as well, so if I can't help you, there's bound to be someone in that network who can help with your challenge.
Jimmy: Fantastic, and we'll pop all of the links that Gary's just mentioned in the show notes so they're there and available for you. Gary, thank you, once again. Really appreciate your time, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to follow or subscribe, drop us a rating, or review it on whatever platform you listened on. It helps others know what you think and how to find us. If you have any questions for Gary or I, or would like to provide any comments or feedback, please find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and I promise, we will answer all messages, so don't hesitate to reach out. Have a wonderful day, and speak soon.
Outro: That's a wrap for this episode of the Ways of Working Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast platform so you don't miss our upcoming episodes. And if you have a moment, please leave us a review with your thoughts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Your feedback helps us improve and grow our community of senior leaders seeking a performance edge. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.