Mike Soutar on "three storms of change" reshaping procurement (and everything else)

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Futures, the podcast series brought to you by SIPs, the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.

Speaker B: Hello everybody. I'm Ben Farrell, I'm the CEO of sips. And welcome to the SIPS Futures podcast, a very, very special edition today. And as part of the great conversation, we're exploring what makes the next generation of leaders. And I'm, uh, so thrilled because it's a subject so close to my heart. And the great conversation is in full swing now that we've got Mike Sutter, who many of the UK audience will know as the forensic interviewer on the Apprentice, but also has an extraordinary distinguished career in, uh, uk, in publishing. And some of the best known publications many of us will recognize from some years ago, like fhm, Smash Hits and Nuts, et cetera. And um, you know, has, has this week been around, having just launched his, his book, the Next Generation. Ah, CEO. And so huge warm welcome, uh, to Mike, friend of sips. It's brilliant that you're here today.

Speaker C: Oh, Ben, thank you so much. I am absolutely delighted to be here and speaking to you. I had such great fun when I came and spoke at your conference, um, uh, a few months ago now. Such a brilliant audience, had so many great questions.

Speaker B: It's perfect timing in every way because like you and M. Many in a second we come back to the sort of motivation to write the book. Now at this stage we've been conducting this great conversation because I believe there's a point of evolution that the level of change we're experiencing in society, generally across the globe, necessitates us to take a moment of time to make sure we're fit for the future. And so there's a synergy in the conversations we're all having. And part of, uh, our great conversation is not only about the skills, but the nature of leadership of the future. So it's time to perfection. And thank you very much. In that vein, I was intrigued to know whether, you know, from your personal perspective, you've been a deliberate student of leadership all your life, or what was it that made you particularly interested in this subject at this stage of, of your career.

Speaker C: Thank you, Ben. And it's a really good question. Um, yeah, I was, I was kind of thrust into a leadership role when I was relatively young. I was 23 years old when I inherited the editorship of Smash Hits. And that was in the early 19, very early 1990s. And at the time there were 28 staff there and all but three of them were older and more experienced than I was, they had more years under their belt of, of journalism and their craft skill. So I suppose out, uh, of necessity, uh, I had to kind of study hard and, and not just think about my, my own leadership journey, but, but that of others. And I've always been very lucky to have mentors and coaches and people who have given me time and advice when I have, when I've reached out, you know, to ask for their help. And so I suppose so many of the kind of foundational lessons that I learned were through doing that. Making the mistakes that you make when you first kind of stumble into a leadership role, being humble enough to recognize when you make those mistakes rather than pig headed about it and think, well, everybody else is wrong, I must be right. Learning how not to be performative as a leader, but learning how to kind of lead with kind of a genuine authenticity and, and I suppose kind of behind those euphemisms, what does that really mean in, in kind of real life? So, so it's been something, you know, that I have experienced and enjoyed and you know, towards the later parts of my career. And I kind of, I always think of myself as being in the second chapter now of my career, um, as a portfolio director. And I kind of have a plural set of interests. But one of the things that I do as part of that is I now, you know, mentor and coach and advise leaders when either there's an amazing opportunity and they want to maximize it, or um, there's a problem that they've got that they need to try and find a way around. And I always have to stop myself saying well if I was you, because that's not what they're interested in. But to ask good questions, to ask good long term, bigger questions that in the heat of the moment, sometimes we're just human beings, we don't necessarily consider things outside of the kind of immediate priorities that are in front of us, but to kind of ask good questions and to get leaders to answer those questions for themselves.

Speaker B: That's interesting. One of the things I've been very conscious of and I sort of tried to, I suppose I've learned it when we've been going around the world with the great conversation is listening to some of the quieter voices in the room or the younger generations as well. Anyway, I loved your book and there's uh, so much in, there's absolute gold and so well done. So particularly I just wanted to start with the three Storms notion and just to get your, perhaps your description to help people understand the perspective that the book lays out, uh, and, and then we can talk about, you know, the implications for leadership of the future.

Speaker C: Yeah, listen. Thank you. Yeah, so it's. These are three storms of change. They are uh, uh, big global issues, but ones which impact leaders on a very personal and local level as well. And it's really why I decided that I felt that I had something I could say that was new and original and would be helpful. I did my research. There are something like 18,000 books available in the British Library with the word leadership in the title. So you know, if you're going to try and say something, then being aware that there are lots of opinions out there is a good place to start. But I didn't want to write about traditional leadership. What I wanted to write about was how leadership is changing now because of the impact of three very large storms. Very, very considerable external, um, forces which are impacting everything. The first of course is AI And AI is entirely changing the nature of work, the way that work gets done, the value of work, and also the structure of the workplace. It is I suspect, the most powerful single tool that, that has ever been introduced into the world in my lifetime. And I think we are just at the very start of that and the start of seeing how it is going to impact us. I think there are incredible opportunities, but also there will, there are threats and risks involved in it, many of which we don't yet know. Secondly, the geopolitical landscape has changed massively and I think leaders even five years ago were probably not thinking about the impact that wars that might happen in other parts of the world might m. Might affect their supply chains. They probably weren't thinking to such a great degree about how, you know, non physical conflicts, but the, but the kind of culture conflicts that exist around gender and truth and identity and a number of other issues really thinking about the ways that those were going to affect the way that they lead. But you've got this, you've got this instability now, um, in the world where old alliances have been junked, new ones are going to start and we don't yet know how that is all going to play out. So a state of real flux there. And then finally we have a new generation in the workforce. And this is a generation which has been, which bore the brunt of COVID in terms of the interruption to their lives to the way that, you know, we've kind of all grown up and made our uh, mistakes in different ways in public, you know, as we've grown up. And this is a Covid generation who are entering the workplace now. And they have different questions and different needs and different desires. And they're also, I think, unfortunately, on the tough end of a cost of living crisis. That old contract between employers and employees has changed massively. You know, there used to be an understanding, didn't there? Uh, when, you know, the old war horses, Ben, were entering the workplace, there was a sense that if you worked hard and you were loyal and you were committed, then the rewards would come your way. You know, you'd have enough money to put down to have to get a mortgage on a house, you buy a car, you could start a family. You would have a holiday or two every year. You would have a reasonable standard of living that your work supported. And the cost of living has really changed that. And so therefore, I think you have a new generation in the workforce who are now questioning why it is that they are working over and above kind of the, the basic safety and remuneration that they get because they're also on the hard end of AI. And AI is, is a force which will eat from the top as far as leaders are concerned, and will change that and will also eat from the bottom. So any one of those big storms, I think, would cause leaders to have to review how they lead and, um, to change how they lead. All three of them happening simultaneously mean I think this is a moment to review leadership and how we approach it for a whole new era.

Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely hear that context as we talk about the procurement, career development, and people are anxious to know, you know, the daily friction of your personal development. And you learn to make good judgment, as you were describing, about your honing your leadership, or you're watching other leaders. And what does that mean in terms of how we get people who are proficient in the profession, whatever profession, actually, in the coming years? Where do you get that experience to make those great judgments at the moment in time it comes? So it is, you know, it's a question we're trying to answer in a way to say, what does this job of the future look like and how do we equip people? So we're sort of in the middle of that conversation and definitely welcome all perspectives on how we would say we're developing the leaders of the futures to become the future, to become the CEO of the future. And so we're thinking about how, how that might happen. I was going to ask about, um, the idea of the three characteristics he describes of the future leaders in the sense of recognizing, well, you know, you'll be way better describing it than me, but also not The CEO not being the smartest person in the room because that's going to be AI but also the, the level of self belief, optimism, which I completely, having been a soldier, you know, and being in the hard yards, uh, creating that and then the work. So maybe you could just talk a little bit about that.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course. Um, so during the, the process of writing the book, it's 60 chapters, some of them. Ah, well, they're all, they're all pretty short and punchy. The longest one I think is nine pages, the shortest one is two pages. And that's A, because that's the way I write and B, because I think it's the way that time pressed people consume, you know, information and entertainment and everything. And I've got kind of two audiences here really in mind that I've had from the start. One are existing leaders right now who recognize that the world is changing and acknowledge that they need to find, you know, a new edge in a changing world. And also those younger emerging leaders who, who may not have had the same level of help and support that some of us who've had longer careers have, have had. And they both have in common the fact that they are time pressed and they have short attention spans in my experience. But I went around and I spoke to many different leaders, you know, different entrepreneurial people, people from sports, everybody from, you know, Alan Sugar through to the, the commander of uh, British Royal Navy nuclear submarine who was second in command during a, uh, terrible potential accident with all of the leaders. I spoke to them about how they viewed the characteristics that they believe are also required to be a successful leader in the future. And three just kept coming up the whole time. And I defined them as self belief, relentless optimism and the capacity for hard work. In terms of self belief, I think none of us are born with self belief. It's something that we grow over time and it is, it's a bit like a muscle. It's something you have to constantly build and work on. And self belief is not arrogance. Arrogance is a, is a completely different characteristic. Self belief is the ability to look in the mirror and objectively ask yourself, am I the right person to lead this project? Am I the right person to lead this organization and lead these people? And I think you build self belief through doing difficult things, taking on difficult tasks and projects and getting through them and proving to yourself that you can do difficult things well. And it builds an amazing resilience. It builds a feeling of self efficacy and that has scientifically proven benefits. You know, people with higher levels of self efficacy, trying new things quicker. And um, when fail and you will fail, they bounce back quicker as well. Then there's relentless optimism. As we've discussed. We are going through now what will be an era of change where we don't know. Anybody who says they know what the world is going to look like in 10 years time. I just simply just don't believe them. I think there are too many variables. I think there are different scenarios. But what one thing we can say is it's not going to look like now. Now, uh, to, to be a leader in changing times, you need to be an optimist because people don't follow pessimists. And what's the difference between optimism and naivety is a plan. You don't stand on the edge of the cliff and hope that suddenly you're going to sprout wings. You need a plan that gets you from A to B. Um, when you've got a plan, your optimism is authentic and shareable and it inspires people. And then the last thing is the capacity for hard work. And I'm not talking about workaholism. Workaholics are, uh, dealing with, um, other issues, I think, so I'm not talking about a kind of a toxic, uh, presenteeism. And we all have to be here, uh, and we all have to knock our pans in and we all have to be martyrs about it. The fact is, with all of the successful leaders that I know, they all share the characteristic of working harder than almost anybody else around them. Those for me are the three characteristics. And there's a difference, right? Because I think you need lots of qualities to be a great leader. You know, you need empathy, um, you need to be decisive. Um, uh, you know, there are, there are all sorts of qualities, but qualities are things that you have that maybe necessarily aren't things that people see. Characteristics are things that people see. And I think all three characteristics of self belief, relentless optimism, the capacity for hard work are things that people need to see in you in order to believe you and follow you as a leader.

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Speaker B: What I loved about the book and I think procurement supply people must read this book because you use uh, a few of my favorite examples of leaders, Tim Cook, Mary Barra and Ben Frost, all talking about that they're supply chain people in their own way was brilliant. I appreciated that very much. And in your research was that somebody who stands out or do you have someone in mind who is literally the most inspiring or the person you would recognize as a leader that you would follow, uh, above all else or above all others?

Speaker C: I think there's no one single person because I think you take characteristics and lessons from lots of different ones. But it's a really good question. One of the people that I, when I was doing the research my book and speaking to people, one of the stories that I kept coming back to and I've kind of enshrined in the book is that of Ben Francis who you mentioned. And um, Ben, for anybody who hasn't followed his story is the young very successful British entrepreneur behind Gymshark. And you know, when he was 19 years old, um, and still delivering pizzas on the back of a bike for, for Pizza Hut, he used his mom's sewing machine to create gym wear because he was a, he was a gym bunny basically. That was what he, all his friends did and he thought I don't really like all the stuff that's available. He did that, uh, he very early on had a real um, space rocket of ah, of a product that people just picked up on and absolutely loved. And it catapulted him from kind of the garage of his parents home to getting space and hiring friends and doing all this. And the company organically grew incredibly quickly. So by the time he was 23 he was running a business which was turning over already more than 100 million pounds a year, which was largely online, which had um, a couple of hundred employees and he was the CEO and he did a really grown up thing. He decided that he would have an external company come in and run a uh, 360 appraisal. And the results of the feedback from his reports and peers came in. And I've had this happen to me so I totally get it. He read it and went what? That's not me. The picture that it painted of the person. He was just like, this is terrible. He started to do that thing where he kind of went through when I know who wrote that, I'll get them. And he was at home and he. And he thought. And he was so frustrated by this kind of monstrous caricature that he felt was, uh, being portrayed. He kind of left the report on the side and went to the gym, of course he would. And, uh, worked out and kind of got it out of his system and got home, but still kind of burning, you know, about how bad this feedback goes was. And he went and he got home, and he was about to say to his partner, she was there. She was just putting the. The report down that he left on the side that she'd obviously read. And he was about to say, look at that. It's ridiculous, isn't it? And she turned around to him. She said, ben, that's the most you thing I've ever read. And he did something that I think is extraordinary, which is he decided at that point that he was not the very best CEO that his organization could have in order to lead it forward into the future. And he went out and he recruited, um, somebody with more experience than him that he felt had the right attitude. He gave them the role of CEO. He decided that he was not going to overrule them even at any point, even though he was the majority shareholder in the business. And he moved, demoted himself to the role of head of brand. And then really extraordinarily, he did the same thing again. He hired a deputy, and he recognized that deputy had skills and an aptitude that was greater than his. So he again gave the deputy his job as head of brand and moved on to a different part of the business. He spent four years working through his business, and then at the end of that four years, he decided that, yes, he felt ready to run the business again. By which time Gymshark was an absolute monster. And again, he was the priority shareholder. So here's the thing that really two things really impressed me. One is his humility to do that in the first place, rather than just buggering on, as almost anybody else I know and probably myself would have done. And secondly, the fact that at the point where the company was running perfectly without him, he didn't need to take the stress and the strain stepping up to the top job. He could, frankly have gone and bought a yacht and drunk, you know, crude champagne for breakfast for the rest of his life. He chose to take on the strain and stress of being a leader because he felt that he wanted to be the best leader that that organization could possibly have. I'm so inspired by his story because it's about asking the right questions about, uh, curiosity about, you know, combining kind of technical technological literacy with emotional intelligence by having clarity that starts with you and your own understanding of your own leadership qualities and what needs to work before you move out from there. And so for me, I think if anybody wanted to look at a model of somebody with that kind of startling humility, then, then I would start with Ben Francis.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. It made me think a little bit, as I'd not really heard the breadth of the story at all before. And it is extraordinary really, isn't it? As you say, I would have. I would have been the annoying person. He thought I knew the answers, you know, I mean, and pushed on. Um, and so it's such a good lesson and made me think, you know, you're talking about 18,000 books on leadership. I spent a bit of time looking at followership, uh, as well as a, as a skill, as a concept of how you would be a good follower in the organization. And then I was connecting the dots together with your reference to radiators and drains in organizations. So maybe you could say something about, uh, that.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think in all organizations, you, broadly speaking of two sorts of people, radiators and traits. Radiators, as the name would suggest, are people who push more energy into the organization than they consume. And drains are people who consume more energy than they radiate. And that just tends to be a mindset that makes people that way. Sometimes I think there's nurture in there that turns them at times to be. To act more as drains than as radiators. And I found over time, um, it's best not to. Not to judge too quickly because people can vacillate between one state and the other. But when somebody is in, ah, a is a drained state, they can just be hard work. Do you know what I mean? They can just be very high maintenance. And the way that I've discovered over the years to tackle that is to have them when a challenge comes up, you know, when a stressful point comes up where they're faced with a challenge that they feel they can't get past, that tends to be them at their worst. And the way that I have learned to coach those people is in the first instance to get them to pause, take a moment to think about this and step back a little bit, give themselves some objectivity, and then try and frame the problem that They've got in place as a constructive challenge to get around, to come up with a uh, realistic plan to get around there. And I found that that often takes the edge off somebody's ability to, you know, accidental ability often to go and then upset lots of other people around them. Jeremy. So it's, so it's recognizing that moment, stepping in, intervening, a little bit of personal coaching at that point to get them to view the challenge as a positive, to get them to think about the, the positive end point of that will often transform them. And that's so much better for the entire workplace because, because dreams take your momentum away. Momentum is ultimately the key asset in any organization. It's so difficult to get once you've got it, you have to, it's a leader's, it's a CEO's. I think first job, uh, most important job is to wake up in the morning and think how do I maintain and increase the momentum in the direction of this organization? Because as the CEO, you are the single person who does this. You talked Ben, a bit earlier on about, about how the contagious nature of leaders, um, if your contagious nature is to create momentum, other people will follow, they will push that along, they will take that as their own mission. If you forget that even for a moment, then that's the point where things start to slow down. And once some, once, once an organization has slowed down the friction that exists underneath it, just pure physics terms, it's almost impossible to get it moving again.

Speaker B: No, I'm completely with you on the momentum. It was even interesting when I was in, you know, left the army and I was in, in retail for a while and how a brand got momentum and it's intangible and the sense of it, and it was pervasive in the sense of internally and externally people felt the same and it is, is almost an emotion in itself, which is interesting, isn't it? And you can get, you build reputation on it and you think, well, why is it slipping away? There's no obvious answer perhaps, but perhaps it is about the leader and the Persona, their, their, their self belief about the organization at the same time. So you know, we're finding great at the moment because procurement supply is so relevant to the world that we're in. And um, increasingly, you know, these are the skills, skills of the future.

Speaker C: When I think about procurement people, I think there are so many skills that you, that procurement professionals have had to develop to be successful in their roles that are uh, again for the future or you know, for the Future of organizations and the future of leaders I think are, are just really critical. You know, I mean when I, when I kind of think about it, it's, it's you know, procurement leaders already see the whole machine rather than one department. They understand interdependence, trade offs, the unintended consequences of decisions. You know, in many ways procurement leaders are already practicing the sorts of systems of leadership that the future demands. You know, most executives see kind of the organization chart and um, that's their starting point. Procurement leaders in my experience see the supply chains and the interdependence of relationships. And in this more um, ambiguous, more flexible, faster changing world, that is the core skill.

Speaker B: It definitely is. And when we look at the nature of business, you know how when I was for example worked at John Lewis, I started the 2011, there must be about eight different uh, digital businesses helping, you know, growth online. And by the time I left a couple of years ago it was about 250. So all the time we're managing the supplier base. The nature of business is big ecosystem and these are the skills of organizational relevance. And that's why I was thinking that Tim Cook at Apple, you know he's bought essentially a big, vast, extended enterprise together to deliver extraordinary outcomes. But it was actually the skills that he developed through understanding supply and procurement that allowed him to run an organization as effectively as, as he did. What do you think is when you've been talking to people, perhaps even on the Apprentice or you know, in your daily life, if you were able to spot a character trait, an individual thing that you thought that young person has, you know, the potential to be, be, uh, a uh, uh, sort of next gen CEO. Uh is anything that immediately strikes you,

Speaker C: you know, when I'm talking to anybody but you know in particular kind of young people about what their ambitions are. The ones that always really impress me that I think they're going to go a long way are the ones who have already started to think about the context of you know, if they're, if they want to launch a new business. What's the competitive landscape looking like here? What's the broader context? It's very easy when you're in a role because you are, because people are measured on task output, uh, uh, to focus solely on that. And sometimes people can get quite a long way. They can be really well promoted because they're absolutely brilliant at uh, uh, excellent delivery in a short time frame. They're trustworthy and everything else but often they can lose that all important peripheral vision. And I think it's one of the things I think if there was anything that in discussions I've had with people who work in procurement who express frustration that sometimes they are, they're regarded as incredibly reliable, will always get the job done. Do you know what I mean? Extraordinarily accountable for what they do can always give you the answer, but you know, uh, do they have vision? It's the other side of the coin, isn't it? It's the curse that comes with being from craft skill, perspective, so very adept. And I think that's one of the things that talking, having procurement leaders think about the peripheral vision and talk about those things. So you know, to stop talking about pure procurement and to start talking about growth, resilience, risk, to give a business perspective over of the functional update that's so important. CEOs are the, are often the people who understand how value is created across an entire enterprise. And procurement people are perfectly well situated to talk about that, but need to talk about it in visionary terms, I think, but also in terms of those alliances that sit outside, your procurement leaders will typically be the best connected, certainly with suppliers, the best connected people in the entire organization. So therefore bringing into that boardroom, being seen as being regarded as being a uh, future CEO, actually that's, that's their hidden, that's their, that's their secret weapon is they can say, well let me tell you how it's working elsewhere because everybody else in the room, they're not, they don't have that depth of insight into other organizations, into peer organizations because they're not spending their days measuring the effectiveness of peers and competitors like procurement professionals are.

Speaker B: I loved, by the way, I was so interested in bringing your whole self. The authenticity trap. Would you say some, something about your perspective on that?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's, I think it's um, There was a trend I think a few years ago which was to do with bringing your whole self to work. The idea that uh, people don't believe in leaders who are, who appear to be kind of one dimensional. And so therefore, you know, that was, that was to do with, with kind of um, I think throwing off the chains of a traditional, you know, suit wearing caricature of a, of a leader. So you know, there was, there was something that was very constructive, very positive about that whole movement. The problem is, I think it was hijacked by people who thought, oh brilliant, I'm a leader. But now I can actually, I can just be myself the whole time because I'm bringing my whole self to work. And actually, I had a row this morning with my partner. Uh, feeling a bit depressed by that. I'm a little bit worried about money. I'm a bit short this month, and, you know, I'm kind of having a bit of an existential crisis. I don't think that is bringing your whole self to work, even though literally that's what you're doing. I think your prime responsibility as a leader is to be able to switch off from the distractions of the outside, to be able to be a warm, rounded individual. But I think that's to do with being able to speak your mind and encouraging other people to do so. Having an organization where you allow the vulnerability is not having to be right the whole time. You know, it's the trap that leaders fall into, isn't it? Which is that sense that people expect them to always have the answers and to always be right. That's not what good leaders are or can be in the uncertain future that we face. So being authentic and, um, you bring your best self to the organization, not your whole self. And your best self is somebody who empowers other people, who asks questions, who has a relentless curiosity in other people, who gets the best out, uh, of people that way. That, I think is bringing your best self. Because at the end of the day, again, back to your analogy of leadership being a contagious thing. If you start to leak out emotionally everywhere, then everybody else will as well. You're giving everybody permission to do that. And that can be tremendously distracting. Taking your whole self and focusing it into your best self. That's, I think, a great way to be a leader.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. I like the idea of constructed descent, as, by the way, as an, uh, encouragement. I was trying to. Trying to do that.

Speaker C: There's a test for whether. Whether you have generated a genuine ecosystem, uh, culture of constructive dissent. And that is to ask yourself, how many of my ideas didn't get through right? And if. And if you've lost more arguments than you win, if you've changed your mind during the day, then you've got that if. If things always turned out like you expected they would when you first started to think about them, it is likely you do not have a culture of constructive dissent because you haven't empowered people enough to challenge you and to persuade you otherwise.

Speaker B: Yeah. So interesting, I think, Mike. I mean, fabulous. Uh, I love the book. So interesting. So of the moment, I've been thinking I'd love, as a sort of final perspective about SIPs for a global organization and as Obviously as a leader of the global organization, I'm distant from everybody's life, not everybody's life every day, but often for long periods of time. So I'm always thinking about how do I create the conditions for a thriving organization at distance, you know, and, and I don't think zoom calls are the answer necessarily. But I'd love your view on, on that type of leadership which is relevant to the world we're in today.

Speaker C: It's a great question. There was, um. One of the things that I write about in one of the longer chapters is, is um, uh, having a blind framework. I think when you have a blind framework it means that you have to expressly articulate how your expectations and how you do things. And I think the best example that I find, which I write about in the book is GitLab SaaS business where you know, the two founders of the, of the, of the business in the beginning were people who lived more than 600 miles away from each other. And so they kind of couldn't be together and they started on day one writing a handbook. That handbook is now more than 2,000 pages. And because they're so transparent, it's available. You can just go online, look at GitLab Handbook and they have written down and documented every single process that they use within the organization. They now have thousands of full time employees around the world who uh, don't work from offices. They do meet up. I mean they give them, ah, they give them a fund to go and meet other people. So once a month you can spend a few hundred quid going and traveling and meeting a colleague, the all sorts of things around that. But uh, uh, it's an extraordinary. Even as company songs in it, I mean they've even written the lyrics to some really cheesy company songs in. So a blind framework I guess is a way in which you expressly articulate everything that you do and how you do it and then you let the handbook live so you allow people to update it. It's a living document that exists. It's an extraordinary, extraordinary piece of work. I think, I suspect that's the, that's the best way I think we're going to, you know, in the long term. I think hybrid organizations are difficult. I think they're the most challenging ones to lead. Fully remote or fully all in. I think those are, those are much easier to lead. The ones that vibrate, um, where some people are in, some people aren't, some people are in some days and some people aren't. I think those are the ones that are most difficult because the tools exist and the cultures exist for fully remote and fully in work. The middle part is the. It's the most. It's the most difficult.

Speaker B: Yeah, very challenging. Is even in a, uh, meeting or mixed meeting is. Is difficult enough sometimes, isn't it? It's very, very difficult. Um, I think we better. We better draw it to a close. But I'm, uh, immensely excited about the book and thank you so much for your time today. Really enjoyed our conversation. We could go on for hours, frankly, because it is a subject that's so super relevant to all that's going on. Um, and congratulations for bringing it all together in such a. A brilliant, brilliant way. And, um, thank you. Looking forward to continuing the conversation in, in different ways. And I just wanted to end by encouraging everybody, you know, who's listening to contribute to the great conversation. There are a million different ways. And also buy this excellent book which is available, I can tell you right now, available on Amazon across the globe here and now. And it's so worth it. So, um, thank you to, to everybody and let's continue because the, you know, the heart of this sits, you know, not just the development of the profession, but the prosperity and success of wider organizations. So this incredibly important subject. Fab Mike, have, uh, most glorious, uh, weekend and lovely to see you. Hopefully catch up again soon.

Speaker C: Brilliant. Ben, thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Thank you.