Paul Thomas 0:00 Welcome to a brand new episode and the brand new season of Starts at the Top: our podcast about digital, leadership, and change. I'm Paul Thomas. Zoe Amar 0:00 And I'm Zoe Amar. This is the bit where one of us usually says that our podcast brings you interviews with leaders from the public, private, and third sector, who are using digital to navigate uncertainty and forge a path to the future. However, in the downtime between seasons, Paul and I have had many conversations about how this has evolved. Paul Thomas 0:00 Yes, so the biggest change has probably been in the recognition that we are principally talking about leadership on this podcast. Digital is still a hugely important part of what we're going to cover, but digital is more the lens that we see leadership through, rather than the focus of our conversations. Zoe Amar 0:00 Exactly. So it's less of a big pivot more of an iteration, which is appropriate agile talk, because today we're speaking to Michael Wilkinson of RNID. Paul Thomas 0:00 Yeah, so Michael is the Associate Director for digital and innovation RNID. And he shared his thoughts with us on innovation and RNID's exploration of agile methodology. We also talked about RNID's move to becoming office-less and core hour-less too, so fascinating to hear from, from Michael on both those things. So given the the podcast's updated focus and sense of renewal, shall we talk about Twitter again Zoe? Zoe Amar 0:00 Yes please, and that really is a leadership issue isn't it Paul? Paul Thomas 0:00 It's a huge leadership issue. Oh, my God, what is going on with Twitter? And- Zoe Amar 0:00 It's a bin fire. Paul Thomas 0:00 How sad is it. It is a bin fire. Zoe Amar 0:00 It is indeed a sad bin fire, hashtag 'sad bin fire'. And I think it's, it's really sad for a lot of people on many levels, isn't it? I mean, when we had that last day of school feeling on Thursday and Friday, last week, it was genuinely sad to see so many people coming on there and saying, I've got jobs through here, I've made great friends through here. I even saw a couple of tweets from people saying that they've met their their sort of life partners on social media and people saying, well, it's it's just not not the same. And there was this real sense of this, this community being really radically changed by what's happened and people having much less of a sense of trust in being part of, of this space. That's been really special to them. Paul Thomas 0:00 Yeah, and we've talked before on here, haven't we about our relationship with Twitter and how it's changed, certainly over the last few years, not not because of Elon Musk's involvement, but because, just the changing nature of social media, I guess. But yeah, I, I sort of join in with all of those, well that big chorus of people saying that it changed their lives, for better or for worse. I mean, there was a time I guess, around sort of 2012, 2010 probably about five years around that that point. 2012 was that I think, where I always say Twitter was at its best, just watching the Olympics and having mad conversations with people from all over the world about what was going on in that stadium and in London, which was quite funny; highlight for me. But um, all of the opportunities, huge connection around the communications world, used to sort of share so many ideas, really working out loud. That really came to the fore, I think. Sharing work that you were doing with people and getting the response back and getting the recognition that you know, you're doing great things for for for different organisations and things like that. The community just sort of sprouted up around all of that good work. And I met loads of people, got loads of opportunities. And then over the course of the last three to four years, I guess I felt that really drop off. The community is still there. I still enjoy it. And I think it's still really really valid, particularly in certain conversations. But the the amount of problems that Twitter has gone through up until now have meant that has become a changed platform. It's a different place. It's not it's not what I remember as being. So yeah, it's a different place today. And now Elon Musk has started to take it apart, tweet by tweet, feather by feather. Zoe Amar 0:00 Feather by feather. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that really unnerves me about it is it does feel a bit like wanton destruction as I think someone called it in in one tweet, maybe. Even the blessed Nigella called it that, she's she's so good at the way she looks at things. I think that I'm just not really clear on what he's trying to do. This is the thing that confuses me. I don't really understand what the underlying vision is. And I'm actually really quite confused and worried by how he's managed to get so much investment for this without having a very clear vision seemingly or a very strong idea of what the business model is. I mean, that was just hilarious when he was trying to negotiate with Stephen King about how much people would be prepared to pay for a blue tick. It's, it's just bizarre. And I really hope that something that comes out of this is that we start to question this culture where we absolutely venerate founders in tech, particularly male founders, as well, because I think that that is a narrative that's just absolutely riddled with bias. Paul Thomas 0:00 Yeah. He's yeah, he's bringing all of that to the platform. He's making it a free for all and taking away some of the integrity that the platform has had in the past. He's really uppending the apple cart, isn't he? And it's just, it's just it's not the same place. You kind of question why did he buy it? If he did buy it because it was it was something that he he thought, yeah, 'I'm gonna tear this down and tear this apart, then why is he so desperate to get people back on board, like that conversation with Stephen King, he's also offered Donald Trump way back onto the platform, and not even, not even Donald Trump wants to be there. Which I don't know, I don't know what that says about the world or where we are. Donald Trump doesn't want to get back on this on this machine. But I think the thing for me is that whilst people are still there, and conversation is still happening, I will still be there. I did, however, and here's a piece of advice to anyone listening, I did just go on and have a look at my settings. And you can download an archive of your entire Twitter history, which I recommend people do, so they've got access to all of the stuff that they've put on there over the years. My only question is, is there somebody who is going to respond to my message within 24 hours and facilitate that for me, because I think there's just a lot of empty buildings all over the world, where Twitter employees used to be. So yeah, if you can grab hold of your Twitter history now. Just make sure that you've got it. Because if it does implode, we will be looking for conversation elsewhere. I did see your tweet and a number of tweets and the charity sector. And I also saw something very similar amongst football fans to say, well, where should we meet next? Where, where shall we see each other again? And I've had an influx of people contacting me through Instagram., so starting to follow me there, who are making making way and I think another one will be Discord. The Discord chat servers and things seem to be another place where people are congregating as a as an alternative. But yeah, it's really, really sad. And I'm sure we'll talk about it again before it disappears into the into the hole that he is making for it. Zoe Amar 0:00 Yes, yeah. A case of digging your own your own hole. Absolutely. Yeah, I think you're right about that. I mean, I think in terms of practical advice for leaders right now, absolutely everyone should be developing a plan B. So whether that's opening up an account on Mastodon or thinking about how you can do different things with some of that, or just grow basically, the communities you've got on other platforms, that is really important. I mean, it's interesting, because if I think back to social CEOs, one of the things that we recommended, just as the awards was coming to an end, long before Musk came on the scene was that leaders needed to diversify. So particularly in the context of their own social media presences. Don't make that just about Twitter. Think about your digital footprint across Instagram, and LinkedIn, and blogging, and all the other channels where people might find you if they Googled you. And I think that's the right strategy right now, for individuals as well as organisations. Paul Thomas 0:00 Yeah, no, I totally agree. And maybe LinkedIn will continue to have it's the rejuvenation that it's had since we all went into lockdown, and everyone started flocking to it. Still has its problems, and quirks and ways of working, but as a platform where we can continue to connect, it's not a bad shout. Zoe Amar 0:00 Exactly. I mean, I'm thinking LinkedIn could be, do you remember when Kylie had that second phase in her career when she launched spinning around? And people had written her off before that quite wrongly? And then suddenly, she launched this amazing new avenue for oh, yeah, I've always loved Kylie. She's fantastic. So maybe that's what LinkedIn is going to be. It's going to be like Kylie circa the early noughties spinning around in gold hotpants. Paul Thomas 0:00 LinkedIn as Kylie, you heard it here first on Starts at the Top. Hot take from Zoe Amar. Perfect. Well, there's no there's no, we can't, we can't top that. So we probably ought to move on to our conversation with Michael. Zoe Amar 0:00 And now for our conversation with Michael. We are very excited to welcome Michael Wilkinson to Starts at the Top today. Michael is Associate Director for Digital and Innovation at RNID, where he provides senior leadership for the digital and cultural transformation of the charity. In 2020, he led the organization's rebrand back to its original name RNID, but with a modern heritage look. Since then, Michael led the development of a new online hearing check, which more than 100,000 people have taken to date. Previously, he led the digital change programme at Young Lives vs Cancer, where he first discovered what it was like to work in the charity sector. Michael's background is in the media, where he was a key player in the digital transformation of the telegraph, and for a time was one of the newspaper's most read political journalists. His work was read more than 100 million times, and he covered hot topics, including the EU referendum, and the 2015 general election. He also provided digital coaching for 500 journalists. Michael regularly writes and speaks about his work in digital and organisational culture, and has become a leading advocate for remote working in the sector. Michael, welcome to Starts at the Top. Hello, Zoe. Hi, Paul. Really nice to speak to you today. We're so happy to have you here today. And just rereading your bio, I feel like I want to do a whole hour just asking about your experience of the political contexts up to this point. But I'm going to resist that temptation, don't worry. There's so much to dig into here around your digital experience, and also the amazing journey that you've taken the RNID on over the last few years. And I suppose a good point to start is a big challenge that everyone's finding across the sector at the moment about whether to stick with the office or to go remote or to continue being hybrid. And as one of those organisations who's gone fully remote, we'd love to start there and hear about your your journey with that. So what it's been like for you and how your ways of working have changed along the way. Michael Wilkinson 2:20 I think for us, it's been absolutely revolutionary. We've skipped that whole debate about hybrid working, how many days you're going to be in the office, how many at home, we've just completely skipped that whole debate. And instead we've been more intentional, we've been able to focus on how do we change our working culture, day to day practices. So we're not just taking kind of the office space world into a remote environment. So that's been really healthy, because we've been able to focus on I think, much more meaningful things for our people. And we're more collaborative, more creative, more productive than I think we've ever been before. But I think, like everybody, during the pandemic, people were kind of thinking, what do we do, we've gone, we've gone fully remote because of the pandemic. But what what happens next, and for us, we were exiting our London office anyway. And I think it just, it just presented itself as an amazing opportunity for us to do something a bit different. We all kind of came to the realisation that it was better to spend our limited money on people and investing in our people and our services, rather than on bricks and mortar. So we took the decision. And I think when you make a conscious decision like that, it then allows you to start to think about the future possibilities, rather than being sort of trapped in the debate that unfortunately, many kinds of businesses are afflicted with at the moment as they deal with expensive office leases that they're not quite sure whether they can get out of or not. Zoe Amar 3:55 Absolutely. So tell us a bit more about those day to day ways of working and how it looks different. So I remember when we spoke the other week, we were talking about how when you run an online workshop now at RNID, it's very different to when you were running it face to face, so can you tell people a bit more about what remote working fully looks like for you? Michael Wilkinson 4:19 Yeah, so let's take that example of running an online workshop. If I cast my cast my mind back to when I first joined what was then Action on Hearing Loss I was in the London office. If we wanted to do a workshop, and we did do them, we'd have to bring colleagues from all across the country from other offices. They'd spend half a day getting to London, you, you do your workshop, and then someone's got to like type up all those post it notes at the end of the day. And then people who've got long journeys back home as far as Scotland or Northern Ireland. We don't have to worry about any of that anymore. So now we are all obviously working from our own locations. And that has really impacted day to day things like facilitating a workshop. I mean, the other thing that we've done, we've we've gone even further, we've removed our core working hours as a charity. So potentially not all of the people you need in that workshop are actually going to be available at the same time. So what we do now we're trying to practice more asynchronous activities. So what that in effect means for a workshop is that we'll probably create a Miro Board. So Miro is a popular whiteboarding tool with kind of virtual post it notes and so on. So we'll set one of those up. Some of them may be synchronised, and we'll get people together, but others are not. So it might be that we'll we'll create a self guided board that'll tell you exactly what you need to do to take part in the workshop. And you can do it in your own time. And it just means that for the organiser, you need to give yourself a little bit more time. So whereas traditionally, your workshop might have been on a Wednesday at 2pm, this in this format, you would say, okay, you've got a week and a half to complete the workshop in your own time. And that's been working really well for us. And I actually think it also removes that kind of group that group think that you can sometimes get in workshops, too. So that's one example of how we're adopting more kind of asynchronous practices to allow people to work more flexibly. Zoe Amar 6:30 And what about that sense of social connection? So I know that you and I have talked a bit about this separately, because that's one of the the challenges into how you create those water cooler moments, and you get people talking and connecting when they are not seeing each other face to face. How's that side of things going? Michael Wilkinson 6:51 Yeah, water cooler moments, I don't know how I feel about that. I always hated going to the water cooler personally. But social connection is really important. I agree. It's even more important when you are sitting in your own house, potentially all day, maybe you don't even leave the house. And yes, you're you're connecting with people on video calls, but sometimes you're bouncing from one to another. And you know the passing references to how your weekend was, but it's it can be quite limiting. So to try and balance that we do recognise the importance of getting people together face to face. So what we decided to do was, rather than spend our money on office buildings, we have invested some of our money into getting all of our staff together three times a year for the RNID staff Summit. And so at those two day events, we basically get all of our staff together. And they take part in skills, sharing workshops, networking, and of course, socialising. And I think of the networking socialising aspect, when we ask staff, you know, what did you like about the summit, it's always the number one thing that people tell us. So you know, every few months they're able to get back together see each other in three dimensional form. And it's just such a great experience, to be able to reconnect. And then we all feel great, we can go back to our working environments, wherever we are, and, you know, continue with our kind of remote working and all the benefits that that brings in terms of flexibility. But those those moments in our calendar, they become part of the kind of beating heart of RNID's culture now. Paul Thomas 8:39 Do you think that brings more energy to the the working from from home? Does that sort of re energise everyone? Or do you find that when you get together, everyone just brings so much more energy than they would in a normal office environment? Michael Wilkinson 8:53 Well, personally speaking, when I leave those summits, I'm absolutely knackered. It's like, I've had to take a train, and do like a commute once. And I'm absolutely shattered by the end of it. And all the talking and social interaction, that you know, it was kind of commonplace before, it's absolutely exhausting. But yes. After a good night's sleep, you feel really energised. You think, wow, yeah, it was so inspiring to hear that speaker with lived experience of hearing loss, or to hear from another company who are working in the space to meet my colleagues again to meet my team members. Yeah, so that does give you a bit more sort of juice to keep going. Paul Thomas 9:43 It's funny that would I've definitely recognised that when being when going into London for a meeting and then coming back on the train just feeling that sense of how on earth did we do this for all that time, Monday to Friday, and thinking back to even when, you know, I've got kids, so when the kids were younger, and how we'd sort of leave, work early, go and deal with the kid, pick the kids up, feed them and get back to work and all that sort of stuff. Easier, easier times in a way, certainly less complicated being at home and just being able to just do that so much more easily, than leaving you tired after a syncopal journey. Michael Wilkinson 10:19 Yeah, and we can jest about it, can't we, you know how tired you are at the end of the day. But actually, this is a better way of working for so many people, it's made the workplace much more accessible, for people with disabilities, for example, it's a much more inclusive way of working. And as a result, we've been able to hire people from right across the country in a way that wasn't possible before, when we were just very restricted to being in a London office and other offices. Zoe Amar 10:51 You've done some work around making your recruitment more accessible haven't you as I recall? Michael Wilkinson 10:58 Yeah, that's right. So one of the things we've done is, we now share guidance with our candidates, before they come to an interview. So they know what to expect. I personally, I've always been an advocate for interviews being a two way process, they shouldn't be scary. Candidates should feel really well prepared for knowing what organisation they might be coming to. One of the best experiences I had was my first foray into the charity sector when I joined Young Lives vs Cancer and having a young cancer patient in my interview, as part of that process was amazing and just showed kind of the values of the organisation, and similarly RNID, I think it's really important that in advance of the interview, I share information about our mission and the things you'd be working on if you came to work for us, and also the culture that you're going to come into, because it is very different to a lot of other places, that the idea of being able to work from where you want, not having those core hours. You know, those are really important parts of our way of working now. And as a result, you know, if I think back to when I first joined the charity, we weren't in the best of places, we were more traditional charity, and we did really struggle to recruit talent. And now fast forward three years, people are banging the door down to work at RNID, we have got no shortage of applications coming in. And we've been able to hire people from every corner of the UK. We just recently hired somebody from Ullapool, which is at the very top of the country, and very beautiful and mountainous. So it's just that just would not have been possible before. And I think that's wonderful. Zoe Amar 12:51 That's amazing, so leading to more diversity in many ways. Michael Wilkinson 12:57 Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we should celebrate that. As somebody who's originally from Bolton, in the northwest, I had to leave my hometown when I was 18 years old. I went to university. But I, I saw that all of the jobs that I would ever want to do, were down south, they were in London. And so I think it's wonderful that now we're creating opportunities for people right across the country. Zoe Amar 13:25 Exactly, oh yeah. Amen to that. Paul Thomas 13:28 It'd be interesting to see actually, because some of the, I've seen some some data back in an old, an old life and another job where the demographics of a city or a town, the vast amount of young people who actually do leave locations to travel to London or travel to university and what the impact that is on the on the local economy. So maybe another another podcast, another discussion. But that whole idea of yeah, not losing the talent locally, because you can stay, you can work and you you also have that connection back into the community, who are open to doing more sort of community based activities and things like that, because of all the time you're not spending travelling. Michael Wilkinson 14:09 Absolutely. People are reconnecting with their families. They're able to spend more time with their loved ones. They're reconnecting with nature. There's just so many benefits to not having to be fixed to one location, which for many people for many years happened to be London. And for me, you know, I loved living in London, but I was quite glad to get out of it when I did you know, I got out during the pandemic and never went back. And I love that. I've been able to spend more time with my dad, to see new places, and yeah, just reconnect with different parts of my life that I wasn't able to do in London. Zoe Amar 14:48 And it's lovely that you're acknowledging that as well through the the way you recruit and encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work in that way. So you've been on this big journey as an organisation as you've changed to being pretty remote and all the other digital changes you've got going on as well. I'd love to hear a bit about your leaders role in that, in particular, maybe around the board and the rest of the senior management team, because this is a big shift, isn't it for for leaders, so I'd love to hear what's happened, and also what you'd recommend to other leaders considering a similar journey. Michael Wilkinson 15:28 I think it's probably the hardest journey for leaders in many respects, particularly sort of middle management, I think it's quite difficult to make this shift for some people. And I think the big thing for me about leadership in this way of working is really being strong on the vision, the mission. Of course, you should have that strength anyway. But I think it's particularly important, because there is something about us all being in different locations that creates the possibility of disconnection. And so being really well rooted in the same vision and mission together is really essential. So I think leaders do have a really big role to play to really assert what that vision is, and to make sure that everybody's really clear. Particularly for when you're onboarding new starters. So in a office environment, you don't have that, that challenge in the sense of, there's always somebody kind of sat next to you, who you can ask those kind of, you know, learner's questions of, and for new starters, you know, you're sat in your office or your bedroom at home. And that can be quite challenging, like, how do you get to know a new organisation? And so leaders need to play a really important role in that. So one thing we've been doing RNID is that all of our new starters, spend a whole day with all of our leaders, we take it in turns to join them for the day, and we talk to them about the big goals in our area of the of the organisation. And, and that's just a really great opportunity for leaders to be able to really connect with new people joining the organisation. So I would say there should be a particular focus on onboarding. But I also think the style of leadership needs to change to. It needs to become much more servant leadership. So sort of taking some principles from from agile ways of working and agile frameworks. I think you need to let go of control, you need to be much more focused on what are the problems we're trying to solve as a charity or as an organisation. And thinking about the outcomes you want to achieve. So it's less about how your team is going to go about doing that, or when, especially if you're in our situation where we don't have poor working hours, and we're completely dispersed across the country, you're much more focused on, okay, so this problem is what we're trying to solve, this is how it helps us deliver our mission as a charity, and these are the kinds of outcomes we'd like to see. And then give the team space, you really need to give the team lots of space, to be able to figure out the answers to those problems. That's really important. Particularly, as we're all in different environments, the team needs that capacity to be able to kind of go off and farm itself and work out what's the best way of achieving something. So there's a big role to play for leaders. Paul Thomas 18:33 And how comfortable have they been with that change, leaders within RNID? That that shift how much support did you need to give them? Michael Wilkinson 18:44 I think we've got, we generally embraced it. I think different people have found different challenges. It is a new way of working, particularly as we start to bring in some of the principles of of agile, some leaders are really unfamiliar with that. And at first, it can appear to be quite uncomfortable if you're having to provide leadership in that environment. But I think people have got the willingness to do it. And so therefore, we've seen some great results. So I think back for example, one of the first projects that we did in this way, was launching a new online hearing check which, Zoe as you mentioned in the intro, we've had 100,000 people complete now, which is amazing. We did that project in an in an agile way. And we were, you know, taking leaders with us on that journey. And it's fair to say that like that went really well. And we learned a lot. Like not everything was so smooth, but generally speaking, we we thought actually, this was a pretty good way of delivering that thing. So let's do it again. And I think we've been doing that over and over again ever since. With more and more projects involving more and more leaders, and yeah, I just get the sense of willingness to try. And just last week, we did an introduction to agile for all of our senior leadership, which was fantastic. That was a really great experience to make sure that all of our leaders went through the same training that we want to be able to provide for our staff. Because it's important they understand the process, even if they're not directly involved in, in delivery. Zoe Amar 20:28 And for any leaders out there who are feeling quite nervous about working, in more of an agile way, where should they begin? Michael Wilkinson 20:37 Right. I think, forget all the agile terminology. There's lots of jargon, it sounds scary. Don't start there. Infact, maybe don't even touch it. Start with the principles and you might actually find you're already doing a lot of it. So for us, the principles are thinking about reflecting, reflection. So reflecting on the work that you've done so far. Evidence based decision making. So really look at all the data, look at what your users are telling you. And use that to make better decisions in the future. Introduce feedback loops, so that you're always able to take meaningful feedback. And then finally, responding to change. So take what you've learned, and adapt, don't try to perfect everything from the start. And I think if you take those principles and start to apply them to everything, it's quite an innocent way of suddenly being an agile leader, without any of the crazy terminology. So yeah, stick to the principles. I think that's a good place to begin. Paul Thomas 21:46 And I think there are some nice things in there aren't there that do help leaders to think right, okay, how do we accept one of those, ideology of of agile, something like perfect being the enemy of good, for example, you know, good, basic incremental increase is better than making sure it's perfect, which, every leader I've ever known, tries to do that within PowerPoint presentations. So it's got to be perfect. Slide 1 to slide 53. You know, it needs to be perfect. Well, hold on, how about a good conversation rather than a perfect set of slides. That sort of stuff is an easy principle to get across, but it is still fairly alien to leaders who are nervous about not making sure that everything every I is dotted and every T is crossed? Michael Wilkinson 22:28 You're absolutely right, Paul, if I was to make this a bit more real for you, if we go back to when we launched that hearing check: we could have spent two years locking ourselves away perfecting this thing, and then releasing it and then everybody hates it. You know, that's like traditional way of working. What we did instead was we said, "okay, what's the most minimal version of this we can put out sooner rather than later? What is the one thing we're trying to achieve?" And of course, you ask people, and it's like, oh, we want to do this, this, this, this, this. And you can hold shopping list of things. But wait, what was the one thing we wanted to achieve? And it and it was just that we wanted to get people to complete a three minute hearing check to see whether they might have a possible hearing loss. So that was the only goal we focused on. We released it, and we put it out into the wild. We ran a bit of a campaign. And we got a huge amount of feedback from it. We were measuring, measuring the satisfaction of it. We were getting qualitative feedback, analysing all of the data, and then that's allowed us to iterate on it, basically do another version of it. And we just released that this last month. And we were in a good place where actually, we were able to optimise the journey. And we were also able to say, Okay, what's the next goal we want to try and achieve? So we'd managed to get 1000s of people take the check. But we didn't know what happened next. We know that some people downloaded a certificate to take to their GP. But we don't know if they actually followed through with that. So our next goal was, how can we prove that we're having health outcomes from this test? And we also had like what at first, at face value seems like a conflicting goal of, we wanted to collect more data in order to put people on supportive journeys. And when we went through this iterative process, we were able to realise actually, those goals can be delivered in the same way. So now we have asked people, if you'd like to give us your email address, we're going to send you a copy of your results and a letter that you can take took to your GP, setting out exactly what you need to do. And we'll check in with you several times over the next few months to see how you get on and support you. And at the same time we'd also like to tell you more about RNID and this great cause and all the different ways in which we support people like yourself. So that was a new goal for us, and it's working. So, but if, I think if we tried to do that at the start, it would have been really messy. Paul Thomas 25:08 Yeah, and I can vouch for the test, I did it last week before we spoke first. I went, the first thing I saw on your website, and I thought, actually do you know what, there's been a niggling worry in the back of my mind, as somebody who grew up on loud music and goes to loud places. And actually, my watch has started to engage a bit more, I don't know what's happened. Maybe there was an update recently? But my watch is now starting to tell me when I'm in a loud environment. Happened at a football stadium a couple of weeks back. And just paying more attention to that it was a very useful tool. So I would urge all of our listeners to go and take the test and give you their data, they give you their their email address, because you have mine now. Michael Wilkinson 25:47 That's great. We promise not to spam you. Paul Thomas 25:52 No, and I was lucky that it was it was a fairly good result, so... Michael Wilkinson 25:57 That's great. It's good, you had a good experience of this. Zoe Amar 25:59 We'll put the link to that in the chat. I definitely need to take the test as well. I've spent far too much time standing right next to speakers at a gig. So I will definitely do that as well. So we talked about agile, and I know one of the things we discussed when we spoke the other week was, how that has then fed through to your organisational planning and strategy, and how you're approaching that in a more agile way. So can you tell people a bit about that? Michael Wilkinson 26:28 Yeah, that's a really good point. Because I think what I've talked about so far is very much in the delivery of a specific project. But, agile principles and the ways of working are now pervasive through everything that we do as a charity. And that's the real game changer, for me. It's great if you can deliver one project in an agile way. But actually, if you can deliver the whole organisational priorities in that way, then that's, that's the game changer. So we, we redesigned the way all of our teams are structured. So we kind of got rid of like traditional departments and the silos that those come with. And we move to a Matrix style management. So we created four programmes and five capability teams. So the four programmes are: Health, Inclusion, Employment, and Research. And that's where those those four programmes are delivering the charity's mission. And the five capability teams are there to deliver the work basically, to make to make that change happen. And the idea is that we create cross functional teams, based on, which subject matter experts are we going to need from each of the teams, and we pull people together and form new teams to deliver pieces of work. So that's the kind of basic principle of how we work. Those teams are then largely delivering in a sort of agile way, typically working in fortnightly sprints to deliver a piece of work. And they are given governance in the form of a control group, which kind of sits above the project. And that's usually made up of a couple of associate directors. And it's a chance for the project team to bring problems, to bring recommendations, to ask for a sort of sign off on kind of big ticket items. And they are like stage gates in our kind of agile process. We're not interfering, it's like, we'll have a control group meeting at the start of maybe at the start of a discovery. The team will kind of crack on, we won't interfere. And then it's, they'll come back at the end of the discovery or when they feel they need our support. And we sign off on the next kind of part of the design process. So that's kind of how we're structuring our governance and our kind of delivery of different projects. But to support that, we wanted to find a better way to agree what our priorities were as a charity. And how would we do that? Well, we created what's called the design authority. And so it meets four times per year. It's all of our senior leaders. And we are coming together basically to set our priorities of what we're going to do in this quarter, what's going to come next and what will come later. And we negotiate with each other. And we we do capacity planning as well, which is just a very complicated spreadsheet, looking at how many full time equivalents we're able to put on different projects. It's an estimation, but that allows us to avoid taking on too much. Because if we take on too much, we'll never deliver anything really well. So that's, that meets four times a year. And to facilitate that, we have created a Microsoft Planner board, which basically has three columns: Now; Next; Later. You could use Trello, JIRA, whatever your tool is. It doesn't matter. But, we have one board, which has all the charity's projects in the same place. And each project has been labelled with the capabilities that are going to be involved in delivering it. So that's been really effective. And we're getting better and better at it each time we do it. It's allowing us to have a much better understanding of what's happening across the charity, where the pinch point's going to be, where we're going to place our collective energy in each quarter. And what might it look like at the end of that quarter in terms of what the charity will have actually delivered? Zoe Amar 30:35 Brilliant, isn't it? Because I think that's an area where it feels like in other organisations, there's increasing tension. So what I'm hearing from a lot of other charities I speak to is just that sense of, our strategy, and our sort of annual business planning cycle, increasingly feels like a bit of a drag on the pace at which we need to go at things with the speed that our digital transformation requires. Michael Wilkinson 31:03 Good point. I mean, what even is a strategy these days? We wouldn't have been able to predict what's happened in the last two, three years, would we? For me, I think a strategy now should be much more focused on, what are the problems we're trying to solve? And the ways in which we might solve that could change. And that's okay. You know, we we, I think we've learned along the way like we've we've made some, I wouldn't say mistakes, but things we could have done better. So, when we launched a new strategy, we had quite a prescriptive view of some of the ways in which we might deliver on it. And as we've gone through the process this year, the team have quite rightly said "well, actually, we're not really sure that that's really the right fit anymore. Things things are changing. Actually, let's go back to the problem we're trying to solve and try to find different ways of reaching the same outcomes." So I think that's a good way of looking at strategy these days. There's no point in trying to sort of say, "you know, in three years, we're going to have x", it just doesn't kind of cut it anymore. Paul Thomas 32:15 Yeah, and I agree. I'm working with two very, very similar clients or clients in similar worlds. Neither of them has an out of date, or up to date, strategic document, or anything that sort of says, this is where we're headed. One organisation is struggling, in my view, to see the what, to see the way forwards and may need that document more than they think they do. Or at least the ability to sit around a table and say, right, what are the priorities, and how do we describe them? The other organisation is absolutely thriving, because they are taking a more relaxed view to strategic decision making based on what they wouldn't call an agile approach, but is much more rooted in an agile mindset, I guess, than anything else. So yeah, I completely agree. And it happens across all across organisations in the private sector as well. But your ability as an organisation to exist in a, it's not a strategy-less places. It's a, it's still a strategic vision, but it's one that is delivered in a much more, could use the word agile again, aren't we but you know, an agile way. Michael Wilkinson 33:26 Yeah, and I think, if you've got a really good design process in place that can really help facilitate this slightly complex journey that you need to go on. So I think there's real importance in holding a discovery, thinking about, 'okay, what are the user needs, we're trying to address? What problems are we trying to solve? What are the myriad of ways in which we might do that?' And then thinking about how you can prioritise which ones to take forward, which ones will deliver value sooner to people. I think if you take that mindset into your strategy, you're more likely to be able to achieve good outcomes. So right now we're thinking about, we think about our strategy around inclusion, it's about we want to make sure that spaces and services are accessible to deaf people, and those with hearing loss and tinnitus. That's that's what we're trying to achieve. And I think when we first went into this, we were quite prescriptive that it was going to be the specific product, this was going to kind of solve all of our problems. And actually, that wasn't right. And so we've gone back to the problem we're trying to solve. We are meeting with businesses, we're meeting with deaf people. We're asking them to tell us what's their day to day experiences, of accessing services. And that's helping to shape a range of ideas that we could take forward. And we want to be able to deliver things sooner rather than later. So I don't know, is there something we could do to help people in terms of accessibility whilst dealing with the cost of living crisis, rather than waiting three years to build this big thing? So it's it's a different way of approaching things, but I do genuinely think you're gonna arrive at much better outcomes. Zoe Amar 35:21 With your journey towards being much more of a digital first organisation. So lots of people will have seen that incredible blog that you wrote about the blueprint for digital transformation. Rereading it, I was really struck by the phrase, "don't be generic and align closely to your purpose", which is absolute music to my ears, because I think it's so hard for that to get lost as more and more layers of digital get brought into organisations. How can you, how would you advise charities to stay really honest and really true to those principles? Michael Wilkinson 35:59 That is so critical. If you don't stick to that, then what is your whole purpose? You know, like, what is your being? Like, I think you've got to really stick to that, because we are in a really volatile situation right now. And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. In fact, I don't think we'll ever go back to the way things were and, and that's okay. But we do need to be really honest about like, what are we here for? What are we actually trying to do? And I think, you know, one of the ways in which you can achieve that is being really, really closely attached to your users, like you need to really know who they are, and what are the things they are experiencing. And then you need to think of ways to help them with those experiences. It's kind of as simple as that really. Sounds so easy, doesn't it? But you know, I see so many organisations not doing that, you do need to be user led, you really need to connect with them and what they were struggling with three years ago, if not what they're going to be struggling with today. So you've got to constantly keep on top of that. But if you're true to your mission, then that's going to be the perfect pairing, isn't it? Really understanding the needs of today, and being true to your values and your mission, that's it, you know. That's going to be really successful. I think values are really important as well, you know, some of our values are about being curious and about being insightful. And that really lends itself to us when we're connecting with deaf people. And we want to do your research with them. It's, we're sticking true to our values, basically. Zoe Amar 37:47 And what's the best way to keep leaders close to users? Because this is a perennial challenge, I see quite a lot. However much you change your organisational structure, I often feel that leaders at the top of the tree are almost unconsciously incentivized to get further and further from them. So do you have any advice about how to close that gap? Michael Wilkinson 38:11 Sharing stories is a great way. So I remember with the hearing check before we launched that. We did some one on one user interviews, which were recorded sessions with people kind of playing around with our prototype. And I, I wasn't involved in the actual interviews myself. My team were. But I found myself glued to them. I was watching them like a boxset. I was like, "this is amazing to see people interacting with with these, this product", and hearing the things they said like, "Oh, if only my husband had seen this before, you know, we were scared to go to the doctor, and we thought that we might be wasting their time", or "I love the privacy of this because I can do it in my own home". These were like really important messages, which if I'd said people be like, 'mmmm, okay, yes Michael', but when you hear it from people with lived experience themselves, that's so powerful. So we edited the clips, together of the kind of best moments and we did play that back to leaders. So I think that's a really great way of doing it if you can, yeah, just really sharing stories of people. It's very powerful. Paul Thomas 39:27 And finally, then, what's on your wish list for 2023? What's next? Michael Wilkinson 39:33 So we've become a digital first charity. So everything we do is with that mindset now. That's super exciting, because it creates lots of new opportunities for us. So it doesn't mean we only exist in the digital space. Far from it. In fact, we are about to launch new services in communities right up and down the country to help people manage their hearing aids and get support for hearing loss and tinnitus. And that's really exciting. We are launching in person services to connect to people who either are not digitally engaged or don't want to be and would prefer to be accessing it in their community. However, it is still a digital service. Our volunteers are going to be equipped with all the knowledge digitally. The information we collect when people walk in through the door will connect to all the other information we're collecting about when people come to us on the live chat or whether they give us a phone call or when they're accessing content online. So the big thing for me in the next year is how do we join the dots? How do we create a much more connected experience, so that no matter how you come to RNID, whether it is in your local village hall, or whether it's on a live chat or anywhere in between, we can make sure you still have the same great experience. You don't have to explain yourself half a dozen times, we can just be there, we can pick up where the conversation was with left off. So that's what I'd really like to achieve. I suppose it's unlocking the power of our tech stack, for the good that we're trying to do, kind of bringing the tech closer to the mission. Zoe Amar 41:17 Lovely. Well, on that note, bringing the tech closer to the mission. Thank you so much, Michael. We covered a lot of ground there. And thank you so much for sharing your story here today on Starts at the Top. Michael Wilkinson 41:30 It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you Zoe and Paul. Zoe Amar 41:33 Thank you. Paul Thomas 41:33 Thank you very much. Zoe Amar 41:34 Thank you once again to Michael for a fabulous conversation. We hope you all enjoyed hearing about Michael's work and plans for the future. What do you think Paul, as someone who as our worker's consultants, do you think we're more open to the idea of work with fewer boundaries? What's your take on this? Paul Thomas 41:34 Yeah, I think it was, it was a great chat with Michael. Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway was exactly that, you know, we need to think about the boundaries around boundary-less work. I know the same goes for you as well, but my day hasn't been nine to five for years now. It's more of a sort of nine to three, six to eight football formation. I mean, we're recording this nearly eight o'clock at night. So I'm mindful that, you know, worksite needs to over and underlap with my family, too. So it's a constant learning, constant rebalancing process, I think, but thank you. Thanks to Michael for his insight. Zoe Amar 41:34 Yeah huge thank you to Michael. And thank you to all of you for joining us this episode. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more leadership chat through a digital lens. In the meantime, you can find us on Twitter, for now if Twitter still exists over the next week or so. And where we'll be at startsatthetop1. And you can also email us at startsatthetop@gmail.com. I think it's also worth saying that we are on LinkedIn as well. Paul Thomas 41:34 Yes, and we're both individually on Instagram, perhaps we ought to take the podcast over there as well. Talking about diversifying. And if you listen to us on Apple podcasts or anywhere that you can rate and review the podcast, please do, it all helps with our visibility and reach. And we'll speak with you again in a couple of weeks time. Zoe Amar 41:34 See you in a couple of weeks. Bye! Transcribed by https://otter.ai