Andy Clark, Senior Managing Director, on Leadership Development

Colin Hunter 0:07

Andy Clark, Ex Accenture MD, has been a client, friend, and contact of mine for a number of years now. He now sits on our advisory board and has for the last two to three years. So I'm looking forward to sharing in this conversation Andy and I had around a number of things. One is my favorite program that I've run in our business potential squared is the greenhouse. The greenhouse has been run as a program right across the world, including the Philippines, India, and the U.K. And we've been running it for now just over 15 years. And each year, it gets approval for the budget from Accenture, mainly because of the impact it has. So we'll talk a bit about that. So greenhouse is the first topic; I will then go on to one of the outputs of greenhouse and talk about how you can bring together groups of junior leaders managers and get some amazing ideas. And Andy will talk about a concept called Liquid workforce that came out of our greenhouse program. And then, we'll move and shift into the world of working with global structures and organizations. And we'll talk about the work that Andy did in terms of weaving together cultures and teams across the world, from India to the Philippines, to the U.K, in his work. And then we'll end with some concepts around innovation, how to scale up innovation, just taking figures of moving from 4000 people when Andy started with the Philippines, and Accenture up to 40,000, how you scale and you move to work in those sizes of organization and the pace of change within those organizations. So I'm delighted to have Andy on the podcast. And hopefully, you'll find as much from this conversation as I did and do from working with Andy on our advisory board and before enjoy.

Colin Hunter 2:05

Andy and I met each other a while ago on a program called greenhouse that we work on for Accenture. And Andy was one of the dragons or the investors in that program. And that's where we first started working. But Andy has been working with us as an advisor and our advisory board for last over two years and has been instrumental in terms of shaping some of my thinking and the ways we're working in potential squared. So, I'm delighted to be able to share the recording today with you have some conversations around some of the key things that have had an impact on Andy. Andy, welcome.

Andy Clark 2:41

Thank you, Colin; good to be with you today. Thanks for the invitation.

Colin Hunter 2:44

Excellent. Andy, maybe just to talk to the listeners around your background, maybe give them a flavor of why we have you on the advisory board? That'd be a good reminder for me why you are on the advisory board? And then secondly, just talking a bit about your background that would help people to focus their minds around what, what you've done, what value you can add to them today?

Andy Clark 3:06

Yeah, okay. Come on. Let me start there a big chunk of my career as a managing director at Accenture, working primarily around client operations, outsourcing of technology, and client operations. I've had the privilege of working in many different markets, many different countries across Asia, India, Europe, and the U.S, and spend a lot of my time with our people in teams working on client projects on a wide range of topics. And really my experiences around big transformation projects, building out client operations, outsourcing to the delivery locations of choice, and taking time to work those operations across from the client operations into the Accenture operations. It's been great to be working with you and your team as a business advisor since leaving Accenture a couple of years ago. And I think my client operation experience, and particularly working with people in teams and products and merging those together, hopefully, has provided some insight for your business as well as we've worked together over the last couple of years, Colin.

Colin Hunter 4:11

And definitely, Andy and I were joking, but you do add incredible value. And I'd like to pick maybe two or three areas today to focus in around; the experience in greenhouses is obviously the one that you know, I always say every year when it kicks off. It's kicked off again this year that I always talk about it as my favorite program, but I'd love to, for you to maybe explain to people what it means to be part of Accenture and experiencing greenhouse in that context.

Andy Clark 4:39

Yeah, I keep calling up really fond memories of the greenhouse, having been part of it for probably two or three seasons as a dragon. It's one of those that get great opportunities to connect with people at all different areas of the operation, but importantly, to pick up new ideas and kind of hear what people think is important and what they're working on is projects within the greenhouse programs. I've got some great memories of it. And your and your team have always done a great job in terms of setting that up and running; it probably gets some of the best feedback of those sorts of events that I witnessed in my career probably.

Colin Hunter 5:17

Let's go into a bit of the depth of that because we both love it. And we've got so many people probably listening to this, and going Yep, greenhouse shifted, and, you know, change my career, and change the way I think and how I operate. But just to give people a flavor of what it's about, because it's an actual learning group-based program has never been that concept is about tackling real business issues over a period of time. And you talked about greenhouses, hot housing, those issues through a design thinking process, to what we now call investors marketplace, which is when we call the dragons and Dragons Den, but the investors' marketplace just gives people a flavor of some of the topics and some of the things that would be through there, because you've had some experience of real successes through that.

Andy Clark 6:04

Yeah, absolutely. The one that I always use, as the example, always remembered a very small team; I think they got federal reduced in sizes, the program has gone on, and they were feeling a little bit lonely on the project. But they came up with an absolutely amazing idea. And something that still sticks in my memory. Now, they kind of came up with this phrase that everybody has one hour to give back. And essentially, they were saying that within their projects within their everyday working life, there's space in their calendars or space in their diaries to give back to other projects or to other operations or to be called on when there was a particular need, that really kind of caught my attention. And they pitched it brilliantly. And we invested in it, took the plunge, gave them some project dollars to go and play with presenting it back across the network. And to cut was relatively long story short, it ended up becoming part of a liquid workforce model that was adopted and used across a global delivery network. And for me to see something that goes from like so small, within one of these action learning groups, as you say, to becoming a core part of the working operating model on a global network of like 100,000 people plus, it's pretty amazing for an idea to start that small. Seed funding goes in at the beginning. And then it becomes just a big part of everything we did was pretty amazing. And I think that's the example I always use because it works. You know, there's many more that you fund that don't necessarily come up to fulfillment, but that one just kind of nailed it; their timing was great, the market was ripe for it. And everybody enjoyed being part of it because it gave them a new dimension to the way they were working. And it kind of worked in pretty much every physical location in the network. It worked in different types of operations as well. And so, it's always a good example to use, I think, Colin, and you saw it from the other side of being kind of honing that idea out, getting it ready to be presented to the dragons, and then being taken on from there.

Colin Hunter 8:11

And I think one of the key things Andy that I always look at is, the level of these people going through greenhouse is not your senior leaders. And in fact, you know, compared to other programs, there was always that badge of honor that greenhouse had about that these were more junior folk who are coming into this, and therefore the quality of their ideas, and the quality of the way they were impacting on the organization, particularly this one is significant, and potentially they don't have the opportunity elsewhere to do that in their role. So, you want to talk a bit about that?

Andy Clark 8:41

Yeah, well, I think that's what I kind of probably learned the most, particularly probably over the last three or four years of working at Accenture was that the inspiration for my day-to-day work is seeing teams and individuals working in operation, coming up with ideas, innovations, and bringing them out and giving them the platform to play. Yeah, not all the good ideas or the brain waves come from the scenic people; it's quite often and in my experience was nearly always the people working on the floor day to day with clients, seeing what was going on in with respect to client demands, being filled and driven by the need to innovate, and being inspirational and coming up with ideas. You know, my job really was to provide the platform for them to play to listen to them when they came up with these ideas. And I think the greenhouse is one example in the U.K, where that ran, but there were multiple different programs in different geographies, different continents, where similar programs would run, and I guess my inspiration always came from working with these teams, walking the floors, which I always tried to do. Whenever I was out visiting the teams and talking to people and seeing what they were coming up with in terms of Ideas, but if you remember calling like several years back, you know automation was in its embryonic form; it is today, it's part of everything we do. But going back several years ago, it was new, ineffective, getting looking to take hold in the market. And some of those ideas from automation were coming out from all corners of the operation, and capturing those ideas, investing in them, building them out, making sure they were secure, that we're going to kind of process properly documented properly, and then getting them out into the operation. So, they became standard operating practices, which was one of the probably the inspirational parts of my role over the last three or four years working at Accenture. So, I think that is a good example of greenhouse automation, or whatever the types of subject matters are building those ideas out and getting them to be operational, is a key part of what makes me tick, really.

Colin Hunter: 10:59

Yeah, I love two things that you talk about there, which I want to just explore further one is the different geographies, the different places that greenhouse has been. But these projects types of programs have been rolled out to the Philippines; one of my areas of passion is working with the Philippines team out there, and the growth of that country and all the extension roles are there. But India is another example. And the cultural mix. One of the things that I had always talked about you when I heard in the business was this ability to weave the different networks and the different cultures together to identify where strengths and development areas are in there to maximize delivery. So do you want to talk a bit about your experience in that area, the cultures?

Andy Clark: 11:42

Yeah, I think that was kind of critical in my role, really Colin, being able to kind of mix and match those different capabilities, different cultures, always felt that with the context of changing client demands, we've gone through phases over the last three to five years of cycles of client demands changing ever more rapidly. And that drives a lot of the inspiration and innovation that goes in behind those client operations. And, and I think the ability to get ideas or initiatives, or innovation topics from different areas and weave them together, as you say, to work effectively, cross cultures is really important. And for me and my role. Having a good idea working in one geography actually didn't do me a great deal of good; what I needed to see was that one good idea, working effectively in every location, because that's the consistency I needed in my operation. But importantly, clients would require in their operations; the majority of clients I was working with were global. And therefore, when they walked around their operation bit virtually or physically, they needed it to look and feel the same. And that was really key from my perspective as well. It's the same idea needed to be effective in each of the operations and get a kind of sometimes those cultural barriers, kind of make it a little bit more difficult to get adoption in some areas. But generally speaking, I found bringing those teams together, getting them to operate well and then managing those programs on a global basis. So that you saw that consistency of operation and that liquid workforce was a great example. Ideas started in the U.K. I remember rightly; the first adoption was one of the teams in Chennai in India. That's where we played it out. First, we have the scale-out there. And then very quickly, I remember seeing Eastern Europe; I think a couple of places in the Philippines picked it up, and then we've got it working with the U.S. And so that is the way to get it needs to be consistent across all those locations. But it may start somewhere, be trialed somewhere else get adopted for somewhere else. And that's kind of how I managed to get it to kind of work together really, and just keep people connected, I think is the important bit right.

Colin Hunter: 14:08

Yeah, I would agree. And I think this connection and collaboration and experimentation you talked about this is a core part of that, but it's also a lot of times it's the leadership of getting that collaboration is a tricky bit to do whether it's people have their own particular goals or the culture as a barrier my experience in there is I've loved watching almost the experimented the growth of the different delivery centers around the globe India, Philippines and seeing the transformation of mindsets. So the Philippines, you know, they're amazing service, amazing almost customer service around how they operate and then shifting much more to being on a sales footing and understanding wherever they needed to have some tough conversations in there, has been fascinating to see. So yeah, liquid workforce is one, but also how are the operations teams in those different locations that are grown as the U.K.

Andy Clark: 15:04

And if you put into the context of that Colin, take the Philippines as an example when I started working with them, the operation was some 4000 people, when I finished up, it was 14 plus thousand people. So, you've got the context of not only the client demands ever-changing the need to innovate, being very high on the agenda, but then also within those geographies, and the Philippines is only one example. Again, they're also going through growth as well. So, they're having to bring their people on, develop the culture, drive the consistency and behaviors capture what they do well, you know, it's a big demand in and around those programs, of just growing at the same time. And I think that's what makes some of these examples ever more interesting. Because each of those geographies will have their own demands, you know, what, whether it's, you look at some of the U.S programs, some of the programs across Europe, which are kind of very diverse with different markets. And then you have the delivery center, big delivery centers in places like China, India, Philippines, or Latin America is another good example, where they're having to build teams very, very quickly build their identity and cultures around it, as well as meeting client demands, and driving all this innovation through at the same time.

Colin Hunter: 16:25

Yeah, and it's a positive version of, you know, getting the impacts of different cultures, whether it's Eastern European cultures into the wider community, we've got a number of very good friends coming out of those programs now who have their careers have gone off and an exponential rate on the back end some of the experiences that almost in some ways a playground of being thrown into a massive project and having to find a way of thriving in it has been powerful. And I'd love to just pick up on the round. The other area that I heard you mentioned earlier around, which is this, this piece about almost failure, and sometimes the right time is not now for projects, and having the ability to at some point say this isn't working. Now we need to can this; we need to stop this work. And I'd love you to talk a bit more about how your experience has been about what we talked about 80-20, 80% of experiments probably failed 20% successful. What's your experience?

Andy Clark: 17:28

Yeah, I guess on the back of what we've talked about so far on this podcast, there are a lot of projects, a lot of initiatives, a lot of innovation, and a lot of client demands as well. And I think there's a couple of examples I've probably discussed today, Colin, one that kicks off a lot of these sort of what is called moonshot type projects. And they've all got, you know, they will get set up correctly. They've got the right aims, the right goals; they've got the right sort of footprint in terms of what we do try to do as a team. But I think it's important to recognize and understand when it's time to stop. And when it's time just to say, fail fast, let's close this project. It doesn't necessarily mean it gets closed forever, but now's not the right time. Not got the right client demand behind it, or there's just too much else going on. You know, and I think that fail fast. We felt I was able to pinpoint when that was the right time to do that. You know, because you can stretch people too thinly as well. Colin, right. I think you know, we talked about this in your business as well, right? You know, it's having enough time and enough bandwidth to be able to focus on the right projects and not take too many arms because otherwise, you could just do a lot of dilution. So I think that recognizing when to fail fast is important. And then just saying like, no, stop, that doesn't mean it's dead. It could come back in 6, 12, 18 months' time, possibly. But it is just making sure that you don't take on too much. I think that that sort of fails fast. The point is a key one. I think the more complex and probably the more difficult one is where you've got a high demand from clients, you're in deep into a project, and it's not going well. And it just feels like every step is pulling it back. And it's slowing things down and missing milestones. The project financials are under pressure, the client's business cases are under pressure. You get parachuted in to assess what's going on and how's it going. And I think those, you know, I can look back and several situations where I should have said, Stop.

Colin Hunter: 19:40

Yeah, right.

Andy Clark: 19:41

Let's just stop this. Now. We need to take a look at why we're doing this how this part of the operation is going. And I think if I'd done that more often, it would have had a better outcome longer. Almost certainly been more difficult to start with everybody would have been firing shots and going; what are you doing? How are you doing? You can imagine the noise that would be generated from that. But I do think, you know, like, generally speaking, I've always felt I was pretty good at kind of pinpointing ways out things and working away through different complex projects. But there were certainly times, you know, one or two in particular, where I should have said, right Stop, we've got to either pause it or stop it completely take time to reflect, work out. In the client's business case, the way in which the projects move forward is the other timelines or the milestones. Realistic is the funding right for the project, or the goals right for the project, and just try and kind of take it forward in a different path. And I definitely wish there's one, you know, one or two situations where I should have done that differently.

Colin Hunter: 20:53

I suppose the thing is, unless you experienced those, you don't learn those. So I would come to a stop, pause, reflect, engage, please. But I always remember a story from early in my consulting career where I was working with a colleague was, and it was somebody with the C.N.A., a retail organization, and they were trying to apply the lessons that M & S learned to their turnaround. And they tried to deploy them into C.N.A., and it was only after about six months that one of my colleagues had a conversation with them in a coaching manner to say, Are you sure we should be doing this? I always remember that reframe of that decision to stop it. Turn then into Okay, so we're stopping this, but how can we make this the best ever high street clothes? How can we ensure that we do it differently, and even then those failure moments, the quality of how you fail, that failure is sometimes getting a bad reputation? But how do you learn, and how do you deploy yourself after that? I think you know, for me, the examples that you've got from the organization you work with, essentially, where there have been those inverted commas failures, it is the learning that's happened on the back end of the kid, of them is the key thing in there, your thoughts?

Andy Clark: 22:07

Yeah, big tough decisions aren't a common example there, you know, because quite often, a client's view on the project, stopping or failing, is very different from say, the suppliers view on that project failing and, you know, there'll be potential of collateral damage around people's careers and you know, kind of how people are viewed as being successful or not having been successful or failed on a project. And I think the key to that is you have to back people. You know, that's the one thing I always tried to do in these early backing people; you got to give them every chance to be successful. But at the same time, you got to put this wrapper around it because we're not going to keep going forever. And the easy option is just to keep going. Right. And I think you know, these pauses and stops are super critical in terms of just making sure that the financials are protected, the business cases protected. And at the end of the day, as you say, you know, kind of reframing, pausing, reflecting, and reframing a project is quite often the right thing to do. And it's having the insight and the timing to be able to do that. Right. And I think that timing is quite often critical. If I look back on things, you know, sometimes you can do it, and it works quite well. Other times timings are not right. So you got to think about is the timing right for the project as well.

Colin Hunter: 23:31

I'd love to get your insight you mentioned to me in a separate conversation around the moment when you realized that something was wrong. And you're, you're sitting there and, in this case, you've sat somewhere around the globe and a hotel, probably sort of either over breakfast or bar, how have you learned to make those decisions for yourself and support yourself through that. Because I think there was a tough decision to go through, how have you learned to support yourself?

Andy Clark: 23:56

Yeah, they are tough, but I think it's kind of very relevant in the context; this is very relevant for the last year or so, you know, the pandemic around and COVID. Because life can feel very lonely, as they say, Colin, you can get put in situations where you know, you kind of go in, look at something degree of assessments, then you kind of withdraw to come and look at what you've done. You could be, as you say, stuck in a hotel room or whatever, you know, we're more recently, you know, you're in a succession of zoom calls, teams calls or whatever, and then you're coming back out, and you have got to find that time to reflect feedback to other stakeholders, what's going on and those sorts of things. And I think you've got to have clarity of thoughts. And I think you've got to listen to the different stakeholders, but you've got to trust your instinct as well. Sometimes on this Colin, you know, I think that's what I found, kind of work to your reputation is built on a number of projects going well or you know, the way in which you deal with people, the way in which you deal with clients, whatever your role is, and it's important that you use those experiences. Where has this been done before? Has it worked, well? Has it not worked well? I always remember whatever my colleagues in Accenture said to me when I joined; there's always somebody around that has seen or done this before. And I think that was one of the best bits of advice I've ever had. And in those critical situations, that's the first question you should be asking, wherein my personal network or my working network? Has this been done before? Who can I call? You've seen something similar, been there, done it, worked their way through a similar project. And that will always remain probably one of the best bits of advice that I would share with anybody. And you know if you see that, as well, Colin in your working life, but that, to me, has always been one of the ways of being able to work out what the next steps are on a critical project.

Colin Hunter: 25:52

Yeah, I think there's, there's too, I see it all the time. And I said to myself, you know, the vulnerability to put in place an advisory board, even though it's everybody's cell, it's best practice. But for me, the first bit I felt when I had an advisory board was I was going to be scrutinized around my thinking, my decisions. And you and I have laughed at a number of times, halfway through the Advisory Board, have I had my head on the table with a need for something stiff to drink to get me out of that, that most of there is a vulnerability about are my thinking right, and being okay, to be vulnerable in that space? I think the second thing that's been very useful on the advisory board, and I, we do a lot of training in this as well as mentoring, having somebody to mentor you. And it's amazing where that mentoring comes from? It's not the likely sources a lot of the times it people who potentially just on there too as a sounding board, or guide, or as you say, have been there before, and just say, Yeah, I've been there, or I've got to an analogous or a similar situation. So, I think it's very important the vulnerability branding brand's vulnerability piece is huge in this; leaders need to get into that space to ask for help. Yeah.

Andy Clark: 27:02

Yeah, because it gets tough. You know some of the examples on the recent advisory boards where ideas that you have or progress you're pulling out to the advisory boards gets challenged from different angles, because of our experience and that setback, that same example, isn't it of going out and checking to balance what's going on? Saying, who's done this before? Who's seen this before? And has it worked or not worked. And I think that's all part of the inputs that you need to get in terms of helping you make your decisions. But that network, you know, I think, comes into play a little bit. You know, there can be times where you need commercial input or unique technical input, or you need experience around to client situations, you know, and there are different people you need to call on. And I've been very fortunate to work with some great bosses over the years. And in each situation, you know, they've been able to, you know, use them in different ways, call on them for their experience, their input, their time, or their intervention, you know, and I think that's the other thing. And I've been quite lucky like that. I know. But it always helps to have those different points to be able to call on when you need it.

Colin Hunter: 28:07

Yeah, no, I think you're right. It's that ability to pick and choose who you can call on, but that's the great thing about a network; more needs to be not just when you need it, but it needs to be cultured in the background to provide you with some different thinking, conscious decision making.

Colin Hunter: 28:29

So, folks, it is possible to bring together action learning groups of junior leaders to make a significant change that is rollout right across large scale organizations like Accenture; it is possible to blend cultures and to mix the cultures of countries like the Philippines, India, and the U.K., and bring them together to achieve large scale transformation for the client. And Andy makes it sounds so easy to do, and it's not, so it's a credit to him for his career in doing that. And one of the reasons we brought him on to be our advisory board member, so thanks to you, Andy, for today. And thank you for listening