You can fly. You can do anything. The marketeer puts on the new MA suit and you should be able to do this at scale faster with quicker feedback loops too, as sales would do from that first contact all the way through. So it's not random acts of marketing anymore.

It has to be a joined up engagement strategy.

Within all that, you still fit in the time to be a Great Britain Ironman athlete.

So your background is pretty unique in this space. Your your senior marketing leader worked across some of the world's biggest asset management firms just from memory.

Jupiter, Columbia Threadneedle most recently, but previous to that Bank of Montreal as well and then Merrill Lynch.

Merrill Lynch as well.

But within all that, you still fed in the time to be great a Great Britain Ironman athlete. So I'm I'm keen to speak to you and understand how those kind of worlds influence each other and what what what you've how you fit in all that around everything else that you do.

Well, I guess from from a personal side, the the the kind of sports side almost came first. So I started off actually back in skiing.

Overall?

Working in ski instructing, coaching around the world, and developing athletes and and individuals, obviously, with a passion for myself. And it was actually through that that I met someone who worked at a marketing agency who thought you might be quite good at at working in an agency, looking after clients and presenting, etcetera. So that then started me on a a kind of a dual path of maintaining my passion and skiing Yeah. While also, you know, starting to get into to to marketing and and and and and working in the city and finance services marketing. But during that time, I did find that I didn't really have as much holiday as I wanted to get to the Alps. I did try for a long while and kinda continued teaching on holidays with my children and stuff for quite a while. Yeah.

But then took up another sport, which extended from running. That was that was Ironman triathlon from that side. And so, yeah, got more and more into that and turned from competing sorry, completing to competing.

Right.

Yeah. And then that kind of took over my life from there on. Incredible. Work.

That's a very high level of of sport, obviously. But the parallels between the kind of performance, that you need to gain and also working within within teams, are there parallels that you've learned that you can take from sport into asset management?

I think that's my that's my beat. That's my sweet spot. The the coaching side, the performance of an athlete, and and from the the digital marketing transformation thing. The key thing is is, one, goal setting.

Being really, really clear as an objective what you want to do. And everyone says it, but can you really smell it, feel it? It's something you you you you know, you you can you can really aspire to. And that's an important thing.

Starting to get that aspiration where you wanna go because then that's got a performance element to it. You wanna kinda drive towards it, but not too far. Again, when you then look at it, so that breaking down how are you gonna achieve it, you gotta have a really good and I think we'll touch on it hopefully later on, but a good three sixty holistic view of what you need to do. Triathlon, swim, bike, run.

So much more. So much more than that. But how do we break down each of those elements to get towards that goal? How are we going to, in business, have we will have KPIs or metrics.

But how do we really look at them and focus on and go, are we achieving it? Or is it just a a random act of marketing that we've done where we've increased increased our click through rates or something we think that's enough? So really good KPIs that know you are on track.

But also as well is the feedback loops from physical coaches Right. From yourself and from data points.

You know, we use and we say we do all that in business. But what's really hard with the teams is sometimes that feedback has to be critical feedback. Sometimes it has to be quite harsh. Sometimes it has be very clear. Sometimes it's, you know, you can look at the data and think, oh my god. We're not doing as well as we thought, etcetera. But all those things are really important to help you grow and go forward.

And so all of those aspects for me kinda really start to feed into that transformation within organizations because it is at the center of it.

The teams and the people of the organization have got to change. We we're not gonna suddenly move to a world where there's no people in it. And so I think for me, it's a really exciting melting pot of everything.

Yeah. And you talk about performance improvement and a and a a key area where people are looking at improving performance, both personally, but within companies as well as the world of AI. I I actually saw something that you posted on LinkedIn, the the other week, which was asking the question, are we actually getting in the way of AI? And I'm I've I've read that piece. It's a very interesting and anyone listening, I'd encourage them to go Stuart's LinkedIn and and look at that. But what led you to explore that idea and and kind of probe around that question?

Yeah. I think, David, we we had a number of things working with teams, And I guess it's it's picking up on these weak signals as it were as a kind of cool you get individuals when we're going through because there's such change. The new technology, we know we're going for a long while with new technology and how much it's changing organizations, but obviously so much more with AI coming through. And what we get is the weak signals from team members struggling with with things or leadership blaming it on the individuals or we need a new tool. And it just seemed too simplistic for me. You know, a a parallel to give you an example within skiing and stuff, you know, is that sometimes people would kind of blame it on the tool, the skis that they're using.

But it's not the skis. It's it's it's and we'll go into maybe later on. It it's the how the individual is moving, their their experience, their tactics, so many more things than just the equipment.

So I started to look at it and thought, okay. Well, what are we doing as as leaders to actually help these individuals and help the organization move? And what I started to see, and this is where, again, there's a lot of puns, these parallels to skiing, but was when I was training ski instructors or advanced skiers, they were some of the hardest to actually change because they got a lot at stake. Yeah.

You know, they're already experts in something, and so it challenged a lot of things. Some of the racers that we'd teach, they've been racing since a child. They weren't used to falling over. Not, I mean, within a race, but when they're doing lower level things.

And so what you have to go back to is do they trust you to be vulnerable and actually fail at something that they think they should be able to do quite naturally?

You know, can we can we actually coach them and and progress them through these things? And what I started to is, I guess, two big themes. One was that experts, while they may say they're up for change, they're not always. No.

And it's very easy to blame other things. And then secondly, as leaders, and especially with so many mergers and acquisitions going on at the moment, there's a lot of kind of change kind of going on and stuff, but we need to support these teams and provide trust, build trust with them, that they actually know that they can fall over, that they have tasks or things where they can actually learn again. And that's an important part of it that they actually do feel. And everyone says this safe fail environment, but I think you have to be more specific to actually ensure people know there's a there's a field of play where they can play.

Yeah. Yep. And it reminds me of a I think I was listening to the cricket recently, and Debacle has gone out on over in Australia at the moment with the Ashes.

But in in one of those breaks where England were doing terribly again, there was a conversation about a batsman who was starting to do really well, but he had kind of reached the peak and gone through, and he just couldn't work out what was going on. So he went back to the England batsman coach, and he spent the whole off season rebuilding his batting technique. And I it made me I think within the within the talk, they were pulling parallels between golfers that have gone completely rebuilt their swing. Andy Murray had to go, you know, with his injuries, had to totally rego and learn his new technique again.

It's a similar type of thing that you're talking about. But what we're seeing now with the challenges that marketing leaders are are under, especially when we've got AI, which is coming in and, you know, if you if you start doomscrolling on LinkedIn, you can believe that the whole marketing ecosystem is gonna stop tomorrow because AI is gonna take over. But that that's that's clearly not the case. But in your in your world and from where you're seeing it, and you're you're obviously you straddle digital and and sales.

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions around AI adoption for these teams? And how how do they go about embracing it while still, as you say, supporting the team that's under them?

I think you brought some really good points there and sort of linking on some of those. One is, I guess, the misconception that, yeah, it's gonna take away from all marketeers and kinda completely move away. And the second that you said that I think is really interesting is that that these experts, they did go back and spend time relearning. Yeah.

I think we get sold a lot of the time because of the the the system we're in. Of course, the vendors wanna sell us products. Everyone goes, oh, this is great. It's gonna be really quick, and it's gonna change the world.

Yeah. Yeah. But it it's gonna take a lot of effort to actually yield the gains from that. So I think just focusing on because there's lots of I think there's lot of misconceptions out there because it's so new and stuff.

But focus on those two about hard work and then also kind of removing the the marketeer from it.

I think what you've got is is that say if we looked at, say, a marketing automation tool, a tool designed to kind of target individuals at scale and personalize the the the communication to them. What I'd link it to is is that there's still going to be the marketeer in the middle running those things. This becomes like the exoskeleton of Iron Man, one of my favorite Marvel characters. But you put on the exoskeleton, and you can do so much more.

He can fly. He can do anything. The marketeer puts on the new MA suit, and he should be able to do this at scale faster with quicker feedback loops too. But what that means, their movement patterns are gonna have to be faster.

So if I, for example, okay, who's my target audience?

How am gonna pick the segments I'm gonna target? Okay. I found them. Now I wanna create the marketing material, the content. I've gotta get it signed off. I've got and they go through, and they may all have two campaigns a year. They may have a campaign a quarter.

Monthly? Wow. We're going fast. This is gonna be much faster. And so what they've gotta do is they've gotta actually be really good at it.

So an expert where they thought twice a year doing a campaign, they're an expert in marketing email campaigns. You gotta move faster. Your moving patterns have gotta be quicker. And that's gonna take hard work, and that's gonna take focused trial sessions.

So, again, I think one of the issues we get these tools, someone buys it from IT or some senior leader agrees this is the new tool. The team take it. Maybe they're have a go at it. Play play with it.

See what you think.

No. Let's get them doing specific tasks. I want you to find a target audience, create a message, send it within a sandbox. How quick does it take you to do it?

It goes up one of those military things. Yeah. Yeah. Did it in twenty minutes. Good.

I want you to see it in ten minutes. What are doing in five minutes? And it's it's working them through until it becomes second nature. And I know I love my analogies.

But when you're skiing and stuff, we get some expert skiers, and they wanna ski bumps. So moguls, you can call them a bumps on them. So they're great skiers, but they struggle with this. It's because the terrain changes. It's a lot more dynamic. A lot more dynamic.

Yeah. It hits you that much quicker.

It does. And it's it's just changing and very it could be hard, soft. There's lots kinda going on. Your your your your balance, your posture is gonna change.

And so when you hit these, you can do exercises before you build people up. Maybe hit a couple of them, but you work towards this. You break the task down until they can do it. And then over time, it becomes second nature.

They're they're changing on the fly. There's dynamic changes occurring because of they've had the experience of feeling those things or I'm thinking it through.

And we've gotta do that with our marketeers. We've gotta get them. So it's becoming second nature to find the target audience, get those feedback loops, change the campaigns, and re go out. But it takes hard work. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not it's not easy.

No. The environment that the teams and asset management working in, especially in the active space, is becoming more and more pressurized. And because of that, I think people are looking to AI and automation as the answer. But how do you manage that? How how do you get to that point of it it actually becoming the answer and helping with it with efficiency?

Well, I think there's there's a there's there's a couple of bits with that. Think one is that we are under pressure in that industry. It's everyone's clear margins are being squeezed, we have to become more profitable. You have many firms kind of, you know, coming together as well as mergers and acquisitions and and the client base is changing as well.

So there is a lot of pressure. And as it gets harder on sales or on IT systems that gotta change, marketing is also getting squeezed in that area to to to to be more efficient Yeah. And and become more engaged with it. And as more and more of our clients are engaging online and in various other touch points over and above just sales, marketing has to be a key part and an important part of tracking that engagement as sales would do from that first contact all the way through.

So it's not random acts of marketing anymore. It has to be a joined up engagement strategy that is linked with sales and progressing in that direction. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna link it to to actually create a return on these these tools and actually adopt them. I think businesses need to get better at quicker diagnostics of what's going on.

So what we have is a story loop that tends to be someone says, oh, you know, we're we're not doing well enough at at this Mark's automation. We need a new tool. The one we've got is rubbish, and so we're gonna get something else.

But if we looked at it and we spent a bit of time and quickly looking through and it's a full holistic view, there's something when we train the instructors who used to use called TP. It's t double e p double e. And it would be a quick diagnostic of a skier that you could do quickly as you go up a chairlift and you see him to ski in the first lesson.

But I've adapted that for business because you need to be able to use it continuously and keep readdressing this. And maybe we'll come back to this in a second. But that holistic view when you're looking at it, as you go, okay. Let's look at my team.

What's going on? When I kind of look through, and we'll go through that acronym in a minute, is that actually the team don't have the experience of doing these campaigns at speed. It's not the current tool. The tool could do it faster.

It's that the team aren't used to that that movement pattern. Or when we go through it, when we're looking at actually the kind of equipment, which is the second e of TP.

So let let's let's talk about the let's just say t t what does the first t stand for? Tactics. Tactics. Okay. Let's just just when I'm listening to it, I just need to know it straight away. So let's just run me through. So t for tactics, e, you said equipment.

Second e is Experience. Experience.

P Physical, which I look at skills within there, the skills of the individual.

E Is the environment.

And last e Is emotion. Emotional. Okay. So how does that all come together?

And this is a framework that you used to you came up with originally within your ski skiing coaching, but you've adapted that for for business and importantly for helping teams build up their skill sets within Yeah. Using this technology.

So if I can just back up to the skiing side. What you gotta do quickly, especially in your different lessons that you're going through, is that you're gonna meet an individual.

You're gonna get on a ski lift with them. You got one lift up, ten minutes. Have a little chat. One run while you chat.

And that chat's really important. Yeah. It's a structured chat to actually get all the information you need to populate TP in your head. Okay.

And I'll come back to it. And then you got that first run to sense check some of those. Yeah. Now what happens, and I'm I'm gonna provide an analogy to kind of help bring this to life.

So for example, I had an instructor who was within my ski school that was trained. I was watching him, and he had this lady who was skiing down. He spent lots of time on trying to get her to lean forward, you know, trying to get more forward because they're they're leaning back in their skis, and that was causing them problem. Doing all these exercises, working on it.

And as I looked to ski past, I noticed a ski boot was undone. Right. The equipment had been missed the equipment check. Right.

Something so simple.

But without that boot done up, they kind of they can't get Nothing to lean on.

Nothing to lean on. Yeah. And the conversation on the way up, you're starting to chat with them around, you know, when did they come to the ski resort? They've just arrived today.

Okay. You know, have you have you skied in any runs? Yeah. I've had two runs.

You know? Which run did you go on? This one here. So you know it's how did you get on it?

Yeah. No problem.

Right. Yeah.

You're frack checking. You found out that actually they're a bit nervous because they broke their leg last year. And that was skiing, and they're a bit worried about it. You gotta deal with some emotional side, do it and stuff.

So there's lots of bits within the conversation. But to link this to business is that when we're kind of going through and we go through some of these is that, say, the equipment, when we're looking at it, we have a tool, say, automation. We keep using it linked to CRM, the ecosystem around it. But the data flowing between the system just isn't there.

Yeah. There's a problem with that data flow between it. And so when an email is going out and the sales team, for example, are thinking, you're not hitting all my clients. We should be hitting all these clients.

We're not we're missing a lot of them. Well, the data wasn't right going in. There was a flag that was ticked that says do not mail. We've gotta sort this out.

So you've got the e, the equipment, good equipment check from from that side. On the experience side, we alluded to it. Okay. The the team have done a newsletter every so often, or one person seems to do it.

And everyone else doesn't. So you got you got a key man risk with this one individual. The rest don't, so we can't scale up.

Physical, from the skill side, when you're going through, the business thinks great. We bought a tool that can do all these multifaceted things, but we only did one of these once. It was a bad test. We've been there.

We're only doing this. The skill side is really important. What skills do we have from that? On the actual, environment, you alluded to something early on, but that environment is who is influencing what?

That piece to do with trust in your team. Have we created an environment where the team can gain the experience with doing different tests, different learning pieces? Is the environment supportive of what they're doing? Can they really test and learn?

Do people want to actually get honest feedback? That email didn't do well. Yeah. Is is it a place where we can do that? And then the emotion side at the end, what I've linked that to is a lot of discussion around whether people are open open minded or closed minded to do with a growth mindset, etcetera, and learning is a really important piece.

So are they open, closed, or undisclosed, I like to call it? They're they're the worrying ones. They're the ones who kind of because everyone says it a lot. We're open to change.

We wanna change. We wanna change. Really, they don't. No. You know, inside because it's uncomfortable, and it and it means they have to.

I'm I'm I'm up for the business change as long as I don't have to.

So looking at that and kind of working out from the individual, a question I love to do with the teams is, what's the last thing you learned? I'm currently learning martial arts with my wife and my my little one and stuff. Oh my god. I'm really finding out a lot of new things and and, you know, how I would have got suddenly. But but constantly learning new things in life is important. And again, are you committed to it?

Have you found someone I tried something then gave it up? Yeah. You know, it's been fascinating. I know the triathlon love, but few people in work as as adults learning to swim.

Yeah. You know? And it's it's it's fantastic. So so that's important. So though that whole system, that TP, it has to be quick because what you find, especially with firms joining together, we've got new tech systems coming in as firms kind of merge or are acquired by something else.

Constant checks. It could be on a weekly basis checking in with Teams. So you've got to be able to do it quite fast. Yes.

You can go in. There's a lot more diagnostics and business value assessments that people do that take months. Yeah. Yeah.

By the time you've got the answer, it's moved again. So it's this balance again and having a framework that is holistic enough, that gives you a big enough picture that you can develop something. It's that prioritization of something.

No. Let's not get a new tool in yet. We do need it. Yep. Yep. But let's enhance that process for a bit so the team can do it well.

And once they reach that KPI, then we'll look at the next piece of tech. So it's really setting out that.

Yeah. It makes complete sense when you explain it down like that and have the skiing analogy there. Coming back to the to the piece that you're that about the getting in the way of AI. And are you getting in the way of progress, essentially, with with or are you getting in the way of AI helping you progress? What's your thinking there? What do you actually mean by that in in simple terms?

What I mean by that is is that, one, is is that when you're working with, say, one of your it could be one of your team or someone else who's an expert in certain areas or perceived expert.

When I say perceived, sorry, that sounds very bad. What I mean is that because it's changed so much. Yeah. Is is that years in the business or years in doing something is no longer a a determinant of expertise. I think it's more of a mindset thing.

So so what I mean by it is that as an expert, a lot of these these people who who have been in it for a long while are quite fixed and can have that Yeah.

Fixed view of how it's done. Yeah.

And almost what you gotta do is go, let's let's let's kind of unshake the the Lego pieces. Yeah. And now let's reput it back together in a different way. Yeah. And that's the key bit with it, was mean, is that what we tend to get is you're linking to the the golfer or the cricket player. Yeah.

Is that everything that Are you willing to rebuild your swing?

Correct. I think.

Yeah. It doesn't feel right. Yeah. It's someone else's fault. But these things together what I said earlier.

One is that we get in the way because of it's very easy then and you see it is that people actually, you know, bomb the solution going forward because they come in come up with the reasons why it doesn't work. Yeah. The tool doesn't work. It doesn't fit around how I work.

It doesn't there's lots of, I'm sorry to say, excuses.

And I I I don't like using that too too easily because of I do think sometimes that's that's that that information you need as a coach to develop those. And I've worked at a lot with expert skiing instructors and and you have to take that and that becomes not a barrier, but but but something you gotta work through to actually break that down. But if they've got trust in you and they say, it just doesn't feel right. Yeah.

It's just not working for me in this area. Well, let's go through why is it which bit is it? Is it is it that you're so used to a process that you've done here for ten years Yeah. That it's the process, again, the tactics that we just need to rechange.

You've got the skills, but you're just so on autopilot of the way you blend those skills.

Let's try something different.

Yeah.

I was I was it's just making me think actually of that the sector that we work within within asset management is can often be shooting itself in the foot in in this respect, and that there is a a not all not all organizations, but lots of organizations, there is a very much a traditional there's a tradition. There's a here's the way that we do things around here type approach. And sometimes the larger organizations suffer from this. There's also we were talking about this earlier about some of the, the the issues around technology. There's a lot of legacy technology in place, which means that they have to do things in a certain way, and it's not always as easy to come in and adopt new technologies like AI. It's not always easy for teams to come in and and, start championing in us.

Yeah. But I think, again, I'm gonna go back. It it's it's not. And the larger the organization, the more complex it gets, the bigger it it gets.

You're you're you're right. It's harder. But but, again, the reason I like TP is because of you go back through it. People can get stuck in this tradition.

Okay.

Let's look at that. Okay. I get it. But that tradition, let's go through TPE again.

And what you might find is the environment's changed. Yeah. The influential individual who's now running that department has changed. They come from a background where AI was really adopted from that organization.

So let's approach it again. The I think the tradition is more of a case of let's not revisit it again. And that mindset is the bit that needs to to change. You know, when you go through it, all these little bits change.

And as each bit changes, something else is then moved and the prioritization may change. And that's why I like having a a lightweight diagnostic Yeah. That you can do at speed and continuous and kinda what you can go deeper or you can keep it at surface level, but you can keep reviewing it. Because of nothing stays the same.

And everyone says these buzzwords Yep. Without really drilling into it and stuff. You know? To give you an example is that a classic I find a lot is, you know, we've been through recently some some mergers and and of organizations.

Yeah. Was gonna talk about that with the the BMO Columbia thread needle.

Yeah. And I think what what you get is, obviously, you got systems coming together and all these, etcetera. And one of the bits I found, I managed to keep all of my team members all the way through that when we came across.

All of my team Well, it's a hugely stressful period, isn't it?

It's a huge stress bit, and a lot of people do leave because of the uncertainty or uncertainty or or they get but what I was looking at is is is a lot of lot of means, a lot of transparency, a lot of conversations with the team, building that trust, that high high trust as transparent as I can can be or could be at the time with them and allowing them that freedom to test and trial things and feed back to us. What I was just gonna say is is that, again, that chairlift conversation I alluded to where it's it's it's carefully worded.

People talk about having empathy with teams and things that is important to you know? And you'll sit down during those times. How how are you? You alright? How are you feeling? And it's it it doesn't yield much.

You may get a bit of a Surface level.

Surface level. Yeah. But going through, thinking through that, you know, how are things how how are you finding the system, how are you finding the the the process, which bits are you you know, how how does this work? How's that relationship?

Yeah.

That area kind of going.

More structured approach to it.

And trying to populate TP again Yeah.

When you're going through it to try and get a better diagnostic of where this peer person is is feeling from those side. And I'm gonna link the whole thing together. So what I started to do, if you imagine with two companies coming together, the good thing was we had a lot of similar tech.

Okay. So that's great because we've some good systems and we can but they're used in very, very different ways. Each tech is being configured in a completely different way. So then you got another misconception. It's gonna be easy because it's the same.

It's it's the same same, but different. Yeah. So then you go through that. So then getting the teams to to build those bridges is, okay. Let's let's look at both of the processes, swap processes. Follow it.

And let's have a look at to be where do we find friction within it and what's the positives of the other. But also as well is then run the process because of what you find when you're going through is someone might say, it doesn't work because it doesn't follow our process. This doesn't work from that perspective.

When you scratch a little bit deeper underneath it, and I know we should and firm should, I don't think always they follow it to the letter, the process. Yeah. And over time, it's come off that track just slightly, but that slight deviation has now knocked something else out Great. It's clear.

Down the line.

Yeah. And it could be somewhere else. A small piece of a lack of, you know, rigor over a data point.

And now this won't work down there. And so working through those things, getting to buddy up and kinda work through those, now we're bringing it all together. So I think linking to it, the successes have been during those time is building that trust with the team where they do trust you to be vulnerable. Again, not just saying it, they genuinely are. And that they do trust in you to to work through and allow them to to figure these new things out rather than think if I get this wrong, then I'm gonna be, you know, out.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Very, very nerve racking. How do you go about addressing the gap between when people are learning about a tool versus training with it? And what does that gap look like in in the real world?

It's a really good question. And I think I'm gonna as I've done so far is go back a little bit first as we run up towards Before too often, the gap that we get with the new tech coming from where we were before is because, again, we didn't we didn't spend enough time making sure we got up to the level of everything that's required to move to that new piece of tech. We've picked a solution we think is gonna just save the day. Yeah.

So you need people who understand it, who can help spec the requirements, find out what the weaknesses strengths are, and say, well, let's just get everyone up to this level first so they could help contribute to the requirements. Then the tool we get, the gap won't be as much. And I think that's that's too often the problem. Yeah. We bring something in where there becomes a gap because we haven't done the right approach to get in to the level we need to.

Do do you think organizations, especially within marketing, focus enough on actual proper skills building within organizations?

No. No. No. I and and it's just in that answer. I I I don't and and I said there will be some organizations and stuff that that that do.

But it's almost what I was gonna say was is that there's there's a ferocious workload always, and there's so much to do, and and and and everyone is is really, really busy. You know, we are under pressure. A lot of teams have been reduced down.

But if we're genuinely committed to it, and what I have done with teams before is put in a meeting for that play. Playtime.

Right.

Yeah. Playtime is not is not fun time when you're not working. Yeah. If we genuinely people are saying, you know, if it fails at training, etcetera.

It's almost fail time.

Yeah. Fail time. But but playtime is an important part of it. If we go back to sports, people aren't, you know, trialing stuff and feeling it and and failing themselves.

Yeah. You know, people learn in different ways. You know? Whether whether it's it's it's reading it, you know, from that perspective, being told or physically doing it.

There's lot know, there's lots of science into that.

But how do we want our people to learn and and become experts if we don't let them feel it Yeah. And play. So playtime, and that time is really important. And so I think a key thing going forward, no, we don't because we don't build that in. No. We're too busy. There's always other tasks.

You'll build that into your teams. Yeah. You'll give that into their into their calendars. They'll see it on there.

Yep.

We did this as a business as a for.

I've I mean, I've heard I think I've heard Apple or they used to do that on Fridays, I think. I don't know if they still do that. But I really like that idea of that you actually block that in, and it's essentially training time.

Yeah. Playtime. It's an important time.

How do we then let let's say we're leading a team.

You know, we're we're conscious that, the world is changing, reading about AI everywhere. I wanna I love the idea of playtime. How do we actually take that and give the team something constructive to do within that time in the world of AI?

Well, a good area of thinking, you know, we have talked about market automation a few times in there, and and apologies, because I think it's one of those areas where there are some leading piece of tech that have recently leading providers of tech that have come out with Yeah.

Their agents as it were, which I think is for me is is is a great example of AI when you think about these these agents or this exoskeleton for you. But within that, what we need to be able to do is and we hear about these terms new terms prompt engineer or or how we kind of constructing the requirements that we want and and making sure, you know, that the pilot, the agent is working for us.

You need to play in those environments and hearing some, of my peers and and other leading, digital marketeers that I know, when they've taken on some of these tools that they're sold you know, the business being sold and and it's great to have, is that when they go in, they start to kind of ask these questions of it. We're talking a slightly different language. Right. So it doesn't quite fit.

I I ask it in this way, but it doesn't understand. Right. And again, that goes back to that you've gotta spend time playing and developing. Now sometimes it may well be that the the agent you are using will develop quick enough that it will actually start to to adopt and use and understand your language.

But not all AI platforms are the same. And, again, that's a bit of a misconception thing that we just think everything is is super fast, quick learning, etcetera. There's there's lots of different things systems behind them. So with some of them, we've gotta learn to maybe adopt our language slightly to how we ask the questions to get the the fit the the the information back that we want.

Yeah. And I think that playtime is an important part. You know? Again, bringing Nazzi, how many times have you seen we were talking about our our kids and stuff, you know, when they were younger and stuff.

When they'll go in and and they may be from completely different countries, they don't speak the same language. Before you knew it, they they kinda come out through play to actually understand the same language of what they mean to do. And that's the same within our business. We've gotta take on these tools.

These tools, we need to spend time to make them fit around us. The winning businesses, and I think the winning individuals going forward, will be those that can adapt these tools to fit for us really, really well. Yeah. And that means tailoring them.

That means when we kind of put it on, again, to use my Iron Man superhero analogy, you know, when you see Robert Downey Junior or what is it, Stark kind of putting on the boot and stuff at the start, he's making it fit to him. Doesn't put it on then go, doesn't fit me. Get rid of it. We we've got we've got to spend time in making sure these tools fit and work around us.

What data are we putting into it? How are we kind of asking the questions that we want? What's the out the the output that we get from it?

And we've gotta spend we've gotta work hard to to make these things work for that, and then that's gonna come through play.

I think that's my key takeaway from our conversation about putting in playtime. It's it's it's always my favorite lesson in school as well. So let's just, I guess, summarize now for our for our, listeners. A lot of them who are gonna be leading teams, and I think, you asked a very provocative question, which I'm just gonna come back to again of, what was the last thing that they learnt?

And, you know, not just learning, but actually studying hard. Yeah. What advice would you give to those that wanna become students of the game again, so to speak? What what what can they do to aid them in that in that in that journey?

I think a a couple of bits.

One is is that we are gonna have to develop individuals and our teams.

So while we get some leaders in digital marketing that acquire their knowledge and important knowledge on the technical platforms in different minutes, be that through events, be that through reading latest things, etcetera. That that's great.

But the game is also the people wear piece. Yeah. So you gotta spend time being a, you know, the student of the game, acquiring knowledge on how to develop individuals in that system as well. Yeah.

And, again, it's both. Unless you do both Yeah. I think you can struggle in going forward. So one is learning to be a coach in that student of the game from that side.

And also within there, as you're kind of going through, is developing your own approach that you can quickly get a holistic view of what is going on from that side. And I said that the the TP we we alluded to is is is how I've adopted something that I that I knew quite well. There's lots of good models out there. But don't spend too much time again. I think this key thing is is anything that's gonna take weeks or months to deliver, it's gonna move.

Yeah. And that's almost not the simplicity of TP is why it's why it's useful, and you've used it across sporting coaching and on yourself within teams, but also then applied that within business environment. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. So you may notice we're sitting in a lovely set here, and we often ask our guests if they'd like to leave a memento to add on to the onto the studio walls.

Do you care to do that?

I'd love to. And a good job you said to me before to kinda bring something along. So I had to have a big discussion with my son this morning before I left to make sure it was okay. But I thought it was only appropriate, and and I love it, is to bring a little Ironman figurine for you just to remind us that the winners are gonna be the ones that can create these exoskeletons. They are available in other colors, not just red if you you want to do it. But also as well is certainly with the teams I like to create, you know, Iron Man was the the the only superhero that was was human that actually built the suit to make him a superhero. And with the Avengers, he leads a very successful team of superiors, and that's what I hope all of us digital leaders aspire to do.

That is a perfect gift. Thank you so much. I will look at that up there and always think of Stuart and the exoskeleton talk that we've had. So thank you. Thanks so much, Stuart, for coming on.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening today to the growth engine. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from, and follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates or on hub agency dot co dot u k. Thank you and see you next time.