Steve Cox, CEO at Employ: From Taxi Driver to CEO and the Evolution of Leadership

[00:00:00] You know what I like about I-Solved? Everything. I-Solved is people-centric, and in a people-centric world you need a people-centric solution. I-Solved People Cloud is a comprehensive human capital management solution that helps you employ, enable, and empower your workforce throughout the entire employment life cycle.

[00:00:19] From tracking to recruiting to onboarding and clients from payroll to benefits to time and labor management, transform your employee experience for a better today and a better tomorrow with I-Solved. For more information, go to I-SolvedHCM.com

[00:00:34] Oh my goodness! Bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided. If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io I'll just ask a little bit about your current gig. What are you doing here with Employee?

[00:01:29] Yeah, no, absolutely. So I've been with Employee now for about 60 days under the Chief Exec of Employee. And so we really focused on the applicant tracking system space. That's where we focus. We're a people-first organization and we think about that from a customer perspective as well.

[00:01:52] And really our goal is to kind of be the leading provider in that ATS space. And you've got three ATSs, I believe. If I remember correctly, so you've got Jump Fight, you've got Lever and Jazz HR?

[00:02:08] Yeah, we do. And we think about them slightly different. I saw you with the hand motion, you know, Job Fight Lever and Jazz like a... That's how I think of them. Just more medium and large. We think about it slightly differently now.

[00:02:21] We think about it more like a simple, complicated, more complicated. Because when you look at our customers, we have some really big customers that have simple recruitment requirements that are suitable for jazz. And then we have customers that have got really sort of complicated requirements, maybe niche markets.

[00:02:41] But like, you know, they've got... They're a small organization, but they've got sort of complicated needs. And then really kind of around that we layer recruitment market in CRM as real sort of additives for our portfolio.

[00:02:56] So the size of coming because I had an SMB mid cap or whatever and then enterprise. But what you're saying, if I understand it correctly, is that really we omit about the hiring complexity.

[00:03:09] You kind of have a big company, let's say a 10,000 person firm that you wouldn't necessarily put in the... You take them and put them in enterprise, but their complexity is actually not as much.

[00:03:20] Yeah, absolutely. And same as where we see in like small organizations where they've got more complex requirements, right? If you think about somebody like a medical center where they're looking to go higher physicians and they want to do more kind of recruitment market in, build talent poll,

[00:03:39] be able to go out and kind of warm those people up and then bring those people in. That's where they would need someone a little bit more complicated than jazz. Whereas if you think about someone in a call center hiring call center operators

[00:03:53] and it's just the same hire over and over and over again, doesn't really matter the size. It's a simple need. I consulted with an energy company down in Houston one time and they had 100 employees, but they're in 80 different countries. Yeah, absolutely. So the complexity was like intense.

[00:04:12] But it was a 100 person firm. It's like you would look at them and go, it's a small business. It's like it is technically. However, the HR complexity and the recruiting complexity off the charts.

[00:04:24] And it's one of the things I've seen like coming into this space when you look around. A lot of people talk about all in one solution, right? We're an all in one solution and we can fit wherever we need to fit in the market.

[00:04:35] And I think that does kind of like, the consumers of the 80s software is a little bit of a disservice because business I've seen is all in one, right? Everybody has different needs, different requirements. I think that's one of the real benefits of employee is that, you know,

[00:04:53] we can take the time to understand the business, understand the business needs, what are the differentiators and then we can give you right product, right fit. And so that's kind of, you know, is a win for us. So Steve, maybe let's, let's start there.

[00:05:09] You've come into this space. So you don't have a background in work tech in HR tech. You've software, of course, right? Maybe give us a little overview of how did you get into this space? And what do you think of our industry? Yeah.

[00:05:26] Okay. So you've been here for 60 days. We know everything. Dr Pepper. Yeah. You don't, you don't have a football team, but you speak about the ATS world very well. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Tell me how did you, how did you get into it?

[00:05:43] Well, let me give you a little fun fact before I get into it. So my wife's a recruiter and so she's been a recruiter. She's been a recruiter. Yeah. So I've got to ask, is she really running the show behind?

[00:05:58] And are you bringing her ideas to your meetings and not getting recruited? You got me. That's a fair question. Oh, you've got me. You know, do you know, I've used that line maybe a hundred times in 60 days and not one person's called me out on it.

[00:06:15] So, so I'm pretty often decided a camera. Steve, don't say that. No, no. Yeah, that's if he turns the camera around, she's right there. She's my chief product officer, my chief revenue officer, my chief customer officer, my EA and my chief of staff will roll into one.

[00:06:34] But we assume that you didn't know the industry when in fact you actually been living in our industry. It's been dinner table conversation. Yeah, yeah. By Gary.

[00:06:47] It's interesting because because I actually said to someone the other day like and I'll get into how I ended up here in a minute.

[00:06:53] But like I said to someone the other day, it's like, I didn't realize that if someone said to me, what do you know about the HR tech space? I'd be like, don't know, very little. I could never work in the HR tech space.

[00:07:03] I turn up here, I start having conversations and I'm like, that sounds like what we were talking about over dinner last night. Like, I recognize this problem. Oh, the hiring manager. What? Like, I'm like, I get this. Like, I understand more about this than I thought.

[00:07:17] See, this is more interesting than your journey because now I want to know at what moment did you think in these conversations my wife isn't full of shit. Before we move on, I need to let you know about my friend Mark Pfeffer and his show, People Tech.

[00:07:32] If you're looking for the latest on product development, marketing funding, big deals happening in talent acquisition, HR, HCM, that's the show you need to listen to. Go to the work to find network, search up People Tech. Mark Pfeffer, you can find them anywhere.

[00:07:51] She's actually telling the truth and here you thought she was just complaining about her job. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, actually, there's that's legit. She has all along. She's telling the truth.

[00:08:07] Yeah. I mean, I've learned some of the things because you hear them as problems, right? And so I hear them as problems, but I don't need to solve the problems because, you know, I just need to listen and be empathetic, right?

[00:08:18] Well, now I'm hearing those problems amplified and now I'm in a position of responsibility. I need to go solve those problems as well. And so the learning definitely got me up to speed a lot quicker than, than I would have thought. Right.

[00:08:32] He still never answered how he got into the space though. Oh, we've got to be used about that. I'm about to. I'm getting there. So how I got into this space was, you know, I've got a career in software and technology.

[00:08:43] I know we're going to talk about that a little while.

[00:08:45] You know, my last company, you know, when I left that company, I decided to take a break and I kind of promised myself that I was going to get into a company that did something that I could be passionate about.

[00:08:57] I don't think I've always made those decisions, you know, especially early in my career, I guess lack of maturity, lack of understanding. But I kind of reached a position where I was like this next job I take it needs to be something to care about.

[00:09:09] And to be honest, like, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm passionate about technology, right. And I'm passionate about people and never thought about combining those two things.

[00:09:18] So when I kind of started this search, it was like technology, I quite like security, you know, I quite like, you know, sort of infrastructure type stuff. You know, maybe I'll get in a software company that fits around that space.

[00:09:30] And so, you know, as you do, right, I start taking the calls from the, you know, executive search firms, and you know, the next one calls and it's like a government.

[00:09:39] And then there's like legal and then there's like background checks and there's all these different opportunities present themselves. And then this opportunity came up and it was like HR tech. And I was like, okay, I'll have a conversation.

[00:09:50] And as I started to talk about it, the kind of thing that I guess that really resonated for me is I'm a kind of people first leader. And I believe that it takes great people to build great companies.

[00:10:01] And so whichever organization I went into, I would have the opportunity to be able to affect that by the people that are hired in the company that I'm building.

[00:10:10] But what this gives me an opportunity is to not only do that, but to help our customers do that as well. And that's what really kind of excited me and got me into this, this opportunity employed. I love it. All right. Ryan normally does this.

[00:10:25] But let's go backwards to whatever age you want to pick. What did you want to be when you grow up? What was the, what was the, what was the bit? I mean, I've never really had an idea. I had a very interesting journey into technology.

[00:10:43] I have a chance in life still. I'd never had that. Everyone always comes on the show with intent or like, I wanted to be this. No one ever says, you know, I really had no clue. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't have a clue.

[00:10:56] I mean, like, you know, if I go back early on, I mean, you know, at school, I kind of was the kind of person I, you know, I worked hard at it, but, you know, never really kind of saw a purpose to it and never really understood.

[00:11:10] And I never went to college. So, you know, in the UK, you know, back when I left school, you could leave at 16. So I left at 16.

[00:11:19] I then kind of did, you know, various jobs for a while, you know, trying to figure out and I mean, when I say various jobs, I mean, you know, I was a roofer for a little while, you know, I, you know, I did some, you know, bits and pieces to try and figure out what I wanted to do.

[00:11:34] But then when I was like 17, my dad owned a taxi firm. Like, so I decided to become a taxi driver. And so like interesting, I was my 17th birthday when you can pass your driving test to the UK.

[00:11:48] You know, I was like my birthday was June the 14th and then July the second I passed my driving test at nine o'clock in the morning and one o'clock in the afternoon I was a fully fledged taxi driver. Hey, that's a legit job. Especially in London.

[00:12:03] That's a legit that's a that's a tradecraft job. It is. And do you know the one thing I look back in my career and like I think because I was a taxi driver from when I was 17 till I was like 21.

[00:12:15] That's what I did drive a taxi and like, you know, people think you know, taxi driver like, you know, how does that lead you to kind of technology as they get you into business.

[00:12:23] The one thing for me about being a taxi driver that you figure out really quickly is you've got about anywhere between like two and 20 minutes to build a relationship with someone to get them to give you a tip, right. And you learn to read people.

[00:12:38] Right. It's like, you know, you get the people in the car want to chat, you get the people in the car who don't want to chat, right.

[00:12:43] And you kind of learn to kind of read people read their body language, listen to them. You know, I understand what they want. You know, if they want some advice, give them some advice, you know, if they want to know where to go, don't force your opinions on.

[00:12:56] And so like you get really good at like relationship building and networking. And, you know, I think that's something that's really kind of stood me in good ground throughout my entire career.

[00:13:08] I mean, that could definitely help you in sales. I mean, it probably helps you in all relationships. But I mean, I can see that automatically helping you in sales. Yeah. And you have to deal with all types of people as well. You don't get to choose, right.

[00:13:21] So it's like, you get some real difficult people and you know, you get some real fun people and like, it's some drunk people and you know, like he said, you just run the whole gambit of like, you know, you know, human population and then you just go figure out how to deal with them.

[00:13:36] Yeah, you know, there's two things I remember about being cabs in London and they're not well one was good. One was funny because they were drunk. The second was I was riding backwards like faced the way I got so sick in the taxi from driving that way.

[00:13:56] I never wanted to get into I never got into another taxi in London for a couple times I've been there. Yeah, see that's a rookie mistake right you never sit in the back facing. See a taxi getting first take forward facing. It really did.

[00:14:11] It changed my entire like next. Yeah, like I was I was wrecked. I couldn't I couldn't catch myself. I was like being seasick on land.

[00:14:21] I don't want but it was a customer one day. This is where my opportunity came in, asked me the very same question that you asked me right which is like one day I picked up a customer and I remember I was taking him to Ford Motor Company's head office in Wally assets in the UK.

[00:14:37] And we were driving along and we were chatting and I was asking what he did.

[00:14:41] And he basically worked in the computer industry. And you know this is like the mid 90s right so like 1996 so the internet still really wasn't around and people didn't really know much about computers they didn't really teach about in school.

[00:14:56] And so he kind of says to me, what are you going to do with the rest of your life.

[00:15:00] And I was like, what a great question. I was like, I'm going to drive a taxi. Like, I don't know what do you mean what am I going to do with the rest of my life.

[00:15:08] And he said, have you ever thought about getting into computers. And I'm like, no, I've never thought about getting into computers.

[00:15:16] And he said, well look, he said I'm looking for somebody that knows how to use a screwdriver that can drive a car that can read a map to come work with us like in a junior position and train him up would you be interested.

[00:15:27] And I was like, yeah, like why not like sounds like a good opportunity and so you know I ended up going for an interview with him.

[00:15:37] It turns out he didn't have a job for me. And so like, you know, the budget budget got pulled, which you know as a as a taxi driver I didn't really understand the whole corporate budgeting system and process but I was like, I just assumed that he didn't think I was the right person.

[00:15:51] And then six months later he phoned me up and said hey we have budget do you want the job. And so I took the job. Perfect timing is history.

[00:16:00] Perfect timing to get into computers to buy by the way just perfect timing again kind of a one of those. What is things you couldn't plan. Yeah, well but but it just happened and in six months later he was you were on his mind.

[00:16:15] Yeah, and it was great for me and it was fascinating because when I joined it was at a time where like four Tata full communication network.

[00:16:23] And so if you imagine every factory in Europe and the UK had TV screens, and then every week they would they would update the pages it was teletext.

[00:16:33] You know rolling text on the screen. And then they would play a video like once a day. And it was kind of broadcast by satellite and it was run around the factories and have the TVs.

[00:16:44] And so when I turned up the guy said to me said look you see here's what I wanted to go do is I want you to drive around every factory in the UK and find every here's a map of every factory in the UK.

[00:16:53] Find all the TVs put tick if they work across if they don't. And I was like okay I can go do that. And so I did it I came back and he said now let me show you how to fix them.

[00:17:02] So it's very simple quick easy fix. He said now I want you to go around and drive and fix them.

[00:17:07] And so I did it come back. And he said great he said now I want you to go to Europe and go to every factory in Europe. So he gives me the map of every factory in Europe.

[00:17:17] Me being smart I said I've got an idea for you. Why don't I take the parts with me and fix them as a goal right because like that would make sense.

[00:17:27] And his response was but then we'll finish too early right and you know we need to like make the contract last which was probably my my second introduction into how some people operate in a corporate world.

[00:17:41] And so I did that. And then they started to teach me about really getting into the into the computer side of it so I started by building you know old free eight six computers for eight six computers and so on and kind of

[00:17:56] you know started to learn and work my way up from there and the whole the whole gambit of like the Internet coming about and you understand in all of that. And it was just a really interesting time and I think you said as technology was moving so slowly.

[00:18:11] It was much easier to sort of learn and keep up with it as it goes. And so what did you do next. What was after that.

[00:18:19] Well it was interesting because you know what if for about two years I learned a lot and then you know contract come to an end and he kind of made me redundant. And so by now I had a taste for it and you know I felt like I had value to add.

[00:18:33] And so this is kind of ties into my second recruitment story I guess is that at the time obviously the Internet wasn't really around right if you wanted to find a job you had to go find an agency.

[00:18:46] And so I printed a copy of my resume and I went up to London and I literally walked around the agencies going in to hand out my resume to go buy a job.

[00:18:59] And so I got put forward for a couple of opportunities and then I ended up in in an accountancy firm in the UK and basically just doing help desk.

[00:19:10] They were a big IBM house at the time and they were looking for someone to come in learn about you know IBM and IBM operating systems and you know IBM computers and you know they bought me in and train me up and I spent a period of time there.

[00:19:26] And that was where I kind of started to really I guess come what I would class as a techie because you know we were making the move from IBM to Microsoft and so they pay for us to do training.

[00:19:37] I did my kind of Microsoft you know exams and started to really kind of get into it and feel like I had a real passion for it and you know real a real craft like skill for it. All right.

[00:19:52] I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce is hard recruiting is hard retaining top employees is hard. Then you've got onboarding payroll benefits time in labor management.

[00:20:04] You need to take care of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience. This is where I solve comes in they empower you to be successful.

[00:20:17] We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with and this is why we partner with them here at work to find we trust them and you should too. Check them out at I solved H CM dot com.

[00:20:30] Oh my goodness bad touching harassment sex violence fraud threats all things that could have been avoided if you had Fama stop. Hiring dangerous people Fama dot I. Oh certainly was.

[00:20:53] I did I did and I did my I did my MCSE in Windows NT 3.5 Windows NT for and 2000 and to them for it. Oh yeah. I hope this is on your LinkedIn profile.

[00:21:08] I did it and so I also did IBM OS to and we did IBM OS to NT migrations and at the time I mean we used a networking technology token ring which was the old 16 megabit networking and we did a conversion to ethernet.

[00:21:27] And that's where I kind of that was become a real passion of mine was like the feeling of being able to type some words on the screen type someone's email address push a button. And then like you know seconds later it pops up on someone else's screen.

[00:21:41] It was like yeah how does that happen. Like how did I know how that I you know it's interesting you say that because I always think about like a radio. A guy understand how but like the words I'm saying now are going through here to be like.

[00:21:58] I get it. So it's all one to zero. Yeah. It's fascinating and it was for me it was just like one of these things I just like I'm an inquisitive person. And so like I needed to understand.

[00:22:12] And so that's when I started to sort of get more into the kind of networking side of things because I just wanted to understand how it all happened. And how it all kind of came together.

[00:22:22] So that was probably you know the first job was more I guess manual with some basics. And you know my second job is the internet was starting to become in you know a little bit more commonplace you know and sort of technology decisions were starting to get made.

[00:22:38] You know about like how people are going to anchor their future.

[00:22:41] You know a lot of the IBM shops running OS to you know these have like a Windows emulator on them and then you know that got out of date and then people we got to like with Office 95 and things like that.

[00:22:52] You know people had to move to sort of Microsoft operating systems and so yeah that was a big change and something I leveraged for my career for a few years was because we did it one company.

[00:23:02] And so I've become kind of a little bit of a you know leader in migrating companies from OS to to Windows NT through the experience. You knew where all the bodies were buried. Yeah.

[00:23:13] Where did where was Y2K did you have did you do anything or was that just kind of happening on the side with Y2K?

[00:23:19] No so once I stayed at that company for a couple of years then I moved on to another company financial services company again in the help desk there and that was an interesting one because we were there for Y2K.

[00:23:34] And obviously you know there was a whole load of you know noise and paranoia about what Y2K and this whole roll over and I actually remember on New Year's Eve like we were sitting there. We were on a call on a bridge.

[00:23:49] We got the data center guys.

[00:23:51] We got the network guys and that we're almost everyone else is counting down to the new year to pop champagne and that we're counting down to the new year to see what's going to happen and then there was sort of like a moment of silence when midnight ticked.

[00:24:03] And everyone went. Are we still here? We still do. Is everything still up? Have we got any alerts? And it was it was probably like the biggest non event that I've been through. Consultants made a killing. Yes. Oh, killing. Yeah.

[00:24:23] So it's probably GDP of a small country was made on the fear as you said of Y2K. Oh, we were a financial services firm. So we were like heavily regulated and we had consultants going around our business.

[00:24:37] Like, you know, I mean, we were so buried in like, bearing in mind we're in the IT function and then very nice in like 40 page business case documentation and looking for us to provide like audit and regulatory compliance and provide and everybody was just like we were just just busy falls.

[00:24:57] I think just busy. They're they're just billing baby. They're just billing. Oh, yeah. They're drowning you in paper and billing. That's right. We could if we should we could do a series on just interviewing those people. Yeah. What were you thinking during the time?

[00:25:14] How disappointed were you that everything you said was going to happen never happened and just go through their stories. Well, I've talked to a couple consultants about this and they said our worst case didn't happen. But it's because we prepared. Had we not prepared.

[00:25:31] No, this is how they justify it. They can justify it. This is how they justify this or rationalization right. This is how they justify it's like listen, we didn't know had we not had we not prepared. What if the worst case scenario would have played out?

[00:25:48] Our hands would have been bloody. So Steve, did you actually have a plan in place that if as you are sitting there at midnight, if the world went down, what were you going to back up? That's what I want to know.

[00:26:01] Well, I mean we were in like two minds right because it's like it's a whole world goes down. You know, we're just such a small part of it right like there's a lot bigger companies and us that need to go figure this out.

[00:26:12] The ability did not exist at that table. Bring me back up. I mean, what we did do was like we sharpened our business continuity plans. You know, we sharpened out our, you know, we sharpened our business continuity plans.

[00:26:26] Just a quick funny story on we were doing our business continuity planning and testing and we had a generator right. We had this big generator and so every time we would do a foul over we would just go cut power. We'd get power company cut power.

[00:26:41] UPS is would all kick in the power of the data center, you know, run for about an hour and then literally we'd kick over to the generator.

[00:26:48] So we'd run these tests all the time all the time as we were leading up to why 2k someone said look we should do a last continuity test month before we do the continuity test. And so straight away like we do it. We cut the power.

[00:27:01] The UPS is kicking great boom generator spins up starts worrying round. We're all good. So we would typically run for a couple of hours and then we would flip back. We're about like 50 odd minutes in and we're all patting each other on the back. Everything's great.

[00:27:16] And then suddenly the entire data center. Whoa, dead quiet. I mean like silence and we had a big data center 100 odd racks. Everybody's scrambling what's gone wrong. What's gone wrong. The generator run out of fuel. The generator nobody had fought to refill the generator. Most advanced things.

[00:27:38] You don't want that money and nobody had refilled the generator. Somebody just unplugged it. So he kept over the court. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but it's so sometimes if you didn't know that I mean again you'd never think about that.

[00:27:54] Well nowadays you get building management systems and you'd have like monitoring and you'd have tools and you'd have reporting and warning and everything else like that. Yeah, we just had like a generator out of the back plugged into the mines.

[00:28:06] John had to go and actually put fuel in there. Yeah. Yeah, those yeah. And so that become part of our continuity plan for Y2K was we need to make sure the generator is filled up and we've got backup gas like TIC. Makes sense. Yeah.

[00:28:21] And luckily we had some consultants to tell us that because I'm not sure we were to figure that out. This is so much fun. Take us into your first leadership position. So fast forward to like when you started leading people.

[00:28:34] Yeah, so I mean it was it was actually at that company and I guess two things happened. One was I was working on the help desk at the time.

[00:28:42] And like, you know, like when you junior and young in career it's easy to look at the people around you and just assume they don't know what they're doing right.

[00:28:49] Like, and then you think like well I could do a bad job of this and so opportunity opportunistically you know my boss kind of moved on. And so I went to, you know, he's boss and I said look, I think I could do this job.

[00:29:02] I've got some ideas. And so he kind of said look great like let's talk through your ideas what you think you can do and let's go do it.

[00:29:09] And so so I took the job I become the help desk team leader, you know at about 1000 people over like three different sites and you know the team of 8 to 10 people working at me working for me.

[00:29:21] And I would say, I was a terrible leader like terrible because because I'd never really had any formal training. Nobody has really told me how to be a leader.

[00:29:32] And I thought the best way to get people to be really good at what they do is for me to just tell them how to do it. Yeah, right like you know training just I just tell you how to do it like I know how to do it.

[00:29:44] I'll just tell you how to do I do and everything will be good. Well, we all know how that kind of story ends.

[00:29:50] And so like it didn't go too well obviously and then so then they decided they were going to invest in me and put me on some leadership training. And so I went on some leadership training.

[00:30:01] And then I kind of fought back to like you know my days as a taxi driver that building relationships with people right and then I kind of started to bring that into my kind of work life.

[00:30:11] So thinking about like how do I understand what people's motivations is what they want what type of person they are and then how do I kind of work with them to get the best out of them.

[00:30:22] And my result was not to obviously get a tip out of them. My result was to get them to you know to perform at the best of their ability.

[00:30:29] And I think like early on, I can remember as like you know I would go through the training and I would learn about doing performance reviews with people you know understanding what their passions are understand what ambitions what my passion is.

[00:30:41] And I think like they make them tick as I started to kind of take that and put that in a suddenly started seeing people you know like really kind of light up and get excited.

[00:30:51] And then what I kind of I guess I realized is like, you know not everybody you know not everybody has to be like 100%. Right we don't we don't have to be 100% some people just want to go just do their job and go home right.

[00:31:03] Some people have got career ambition. Some people you know really want coaching mentoring and developing some people are just in the wrong seat.

[00:31:11] And I think you know, working with people to help them understand what it is they want to do, and then getting them into the right position and then helping them, you know, develop grow wherever it is they want to be or, you know, helping them if they want to transition out.

[00:31:25] I think understanding people's motivations. I think that was probably a really early thing in my career from a leadership style that I kind of that really resonated with me and something that I've kind of built on throughout my career. So question around patients.

[00:31:41] It seems like when you started, you were just like, go get this done. This is how you do it. Come back will be perfect somewhere in there right you went to this leadership training you brought your taxi cab train experience and

[00:31:55] for someone that's in that spot now right someone like they're hitting that spot they're like just telling people what to do. How do they build that patience to say, here's, you know, prioritization maybe here's 10 things I know I need to accomplish in the next year.

[00:32:10] I know the end result is right here and we can get it done but how do I drive my people to do that and not just give them the answer how do I walk them through step by step and how do you strain yourself from actually jumping in.

[00:32:24] Yeah, I mean that's a good question. I think the first thing you've got to do is ask yourself do you actually want to do it.

[00:32:29] Right because a lot of people get promoted into leadership because it's like, I'm the best sales person. And so now we're looking for sales leader I'm going to promote you right or I'm the best techie and now I'm going to promote you right and it feels to a lot of people it's the path to the next

[00:32:44] part of career progression more money more status whatever it might be. And so my first thing to everybody is like I should have the question do you really want to be a leader. Right that's number one.

[00:32:54] Then I think like if you decide that there's something that you really want to do, I think a phrase that always sticks in my mind is like, if everything's a priority then nothing's a priority.

[00:33:03] Right and you've got to sit down and figure out like I start with the where am I today right like where am I today do I know where I am today do I know where I want to go and like what are the steps and the milestones that you know things that we need to achieve the outcomes that we need to get to get there.

[00:33:22] And I think once you've got that figured out, then I think you've got to sit down and you got to talk that through with your team. And so I'm a believer of like, you don't get 10 people in a room and try and come up with a plan.

[00:33:35] You get a couple of people in the room you come up with a plan and then you get 10 people in the room and you empower them to pick the plan apart. Right. And then you come up with a combined plan because you've got to start from something.

[00:33:48] Then I think once you've got, you know, here's where we are. Here's where we're going. Here's the steps we're going to get to to get there the outcomes we're looking for. And then you've got a timeline to it.

[00:33:58] Now you've got something that you can be accountable to right and your team can be accountable to. And I think that's the for me is the key right is a lot of people will say well we didn't achieve what we set out to do.

[00:34:10] Well, is everybody clear what we set out to do because it becomes a much easier conversation. And then I think for the leader is much easier to be patient. You know you built a plan. You know where you're going. You know what you expect to outcome.

[00:34:26] You know what time you're going to get there. You know what you're going to achieve. And yeah, if you start to fall off the plan, then you know you need to go accelerate and push in some areas and you know obviously business changes, economic changes.

[00:34:37] You have to pivot. But that's okay. But if you pivot it means you pivot. It doesn't mean we do this. Oh, and by the way, we do this as well. Right because that's where it starts to unravel. Right.

[00:34:49] It's it's one of the things that I think that you're highlighting for folks is making the decision. Okay. Do I really want to do this? Do I want to become a leader? And if they answer to that becomes a yes.

[00:35:03] Then I think probably another question that's coming up or should come up is do I have the training in order to be that later? And if the answer is no, okay, how am I going to get that training? Yeah, through the company or otherwise.

[00:35:19] But again, if the answer is yes, which I like that you've emphasized, hey, you might just because you're a great want the best salesperson, you might not want the sales leadership. Every whole thing is not a question. Yeah.

[00:35:33] And I think there's another key thing to it as well, which is like leadership style. Like, like you've got to be authentic and you've got to know yourself. Right.

[00:35:44] Like because you see people will go read books or you know, listen to podcasts or, you know, understand some kind of leadership style and they think, I want to be that kind of leader. Like that's what I want to be.

[00:35:55] And it's like, it's like, yeah, I'm sure some people can pull that off. But there's a certain level of authenticity that people see and people believe in. Like, you know, I talk a lot, you'll hear me say, you know, I'm a people first leader.

[00:36:08] Like I absolutely believe that. But you know, I'm also a value creation guy. I'm an operational efficiency guy. I believe in performance culture and all of those things. But I believe it all starts with people. Right.

[00:36:22] And if you confuse people can confuse that, you know, as like, well, you know, we just go get the people and, you know, we, you know, we give them, you know, free coffee and free dinner.

[00:36:31] And you know, we give them some days off with a great culture and our company will be great. Like, like no, it won't like, you know, you need the right people to understand where you're going and what you do and you need the right level of performance.

[00:36:43] You know, and culture starts from within and builds up culture isn't something that you drive from the top down. Like I think you have to understand your leadership style and who you are, who you want to be.

[00:36:54] Does a great leader in your opinion, does a great leader pivot their communication style if the team or if the company's not resonated with resonating with their messaging and not just me rephrase, not just how they communicate but their morals or values in that communication.

[00:37:15] Yeah, I mean, listen, if you go into an organization, you know, of, you know, if you take employ right we currently like 550 ish people, right. And you know, there's people have come through, you know, the acquisition of, you know, the products and you're brought together as as employee.

[00:37:33] Like, like, you've got to meet the people where they're at. Right. You have to understand that they've gone on a journey, you know, they've, they're certain to just used to a certain level of communication.

[00:37:43] And this is no different to, you know, a new CEO or a new leader coming into anything.

[00:37:48] You know, you only knew what you knew before. Right. And if you had a, if you had a great leader before you expect them to do what they did if you had a terrible leader before you expect the person not to do that.

[00:37:59] So I think there is an element of that. But I also think like it's hard to be, it's hard to be anything other than your real authentic self and come across authentic.

[00:38:12] I think you can adapt your style and your messaging. Right. And, you know, if the organization needs empathy, it needs empathy. If the organization needs to feel certainty, you can give certainty. But I think the delivery of the message needs to be in your own authentic style.

[00:38:27] So one of the things that you said earlier is that you really, you're curious. You got to a certain point in your tech career where you're like, I just wanted to figure out how it works.

[00:38:36] So I would imagine that that curiosity has not gone away. You just positioned the curiosity in different ways now. Right. So if true, what are the other things that kind of make you that authentic layer of those things like curiosity that make you you.

[00:38:53] Yeah, I think a couple of things really I'm a very, I'm a very curious person right. I like to ask questions.

[00:38:59] I operate on a trust but verify right like and the more you verify out the more I trust you right that that kind of is important to me.

[00:39:08] I'm also very direct, you know, sometimes I can be a little blunt like an I know that about myself I have to be aware about that.

[00:39:16] But I'm also very direct and transparent. You know, that's the kind of things I pride myself on is, you know, I will tell you how I feel you don't have to figure it out.

[00:39:26] Like and I'm very transparent about what we're doing and why we're doing it because like, you know, I've been an individual contributor. I've worked in corporate companies, you know, I've worked in small companies.

[00:39:37] And when people stand up and tell a story, and everybody looks around at each other and goes, that's not what really happened though is it because they just know right.

[00:39:46] And so like, you know, you can't always be completely honest and completely transparent. But like, I think it's fair to share, you know, how you feel and what you're doing and why you're doing it and give people context, because I think people will get behind it more.

[00:40:01] And when people feel like that you are sharing with them, you know, the progress you make in why you're making the decisions that you're making. I think people will then be more likely to, you know, work with you, follow you, you know, go implement and you know, advocate on your behalf.

[00:40:18] And I was explaining this very point to my 18 year old, just the other day because he said, you know, I don't go I don't understand girls. I understand girls. I just don't understand girls. I said, well, here's the deal. It's a situational line that you need to understand.

[00:40:34] And any like telling you guys okay, since it sits down my desk, I see you guys what do you mean? I said, if if your girlfriend asked you, these jeans make my ass look fat. Goodness. What's your answer?

[00:40:52] You can't answer it truthfully. Whatever that is, you've got to answer. No, you look great. You look fantastic. Did you hear Dr Pepper took over the number two?

[00:41:03] No, but that's the thing to your point about there is a time in which you can be transparent. You should probably 90% of the time maybe 95% of the time.

[00:41:12] There's also a time when you can't and a great leader knows when those times are and when they can't just can't for whatever reason. There's an element as well of timing right like there's some things the organization needs to know at a certain time.

[00:41:29] Right. And there's times like, you know, if you are like doing an acquisition for example, I've done a lot of acquisitions in my career,

[00:41:36] like you can't tell people about every conversation you have it right. Everybody gets distracted everybody's heads turn in everybody wants to know what's going to happen who's buying home. How are we going to integrate it? Yeah, and all we've done is have an opening conversation.

[00:41:50] And I think there's like an appropriate time to sort of tell people, you know, and so I think that's that's always a balance.

[00:41:57] And then really it's about like, you know, sharing as much information as you can so that people understand the context because I think, you know, a lot of people go to work, you know,

[00:42:07] and they want to feel connected to the organization that they work with, and they want to understand why their job makes a difference to the organization.

[00:42:18] And it kind of is another thing of another thing I think about a lot is like, you know, bonuses, like companies pay bonuses, right. And they'll say, hey, we pay a bonus and it's done on, you know, revving you an EBITDA.

[00:42:31] And, you know, a lot of people turn around and say, I understand revenue in EBITDA, like explain that to me, which then tells me straight away like they don't really understand like how they earn their bonus.

[00:42:42] And so you're giving away free money, which is great companies performing you go pay your people.

[00:42:47] But you see I prefer an organization where you can connect the work that people are doing to the performance of the company to the reward that they get, because that's how you get gratification right I did this part of work.

[00:43:02] My company was successful because I did this work. I've been rewarded by it like that's a sense of gratification.

[00:43:09] And we miss that in a lot of companies because the bonuses the but that you expect it as your salary right I get a salary I get a bonus I expect to get my bonus I didn't get my bonus where's my bonus.

[00:43:21] Yeah, there's you know that it's interesting how you describe that because as you're saying this and I reflect back years ago when I was in corporate. There were times where I did just get a bonus.

[00:43:33] Cool. I know I'm getting it I knew I was getting it at a time I just had to beat the company at the time of distribution and I was getting it. And it was I counted on it and I knew it was there.

[00:43:43] But when we went to performance based bonus I knew I was still getting a bonus.

[00:43:48] It was a matter of how much based on how much I affected it became a game in my mind, right it became more of a driver for me, not just to get more money, but I actually wanted to achieve mainly because I believed in the company.

[00:44:02] I wanted to achieve what I needed to achieve to see how far I could push that bonus. Yeah, ultimately for my own good but it probably held me there longer than I needed to be there at the company.

[00:44:14] Yeah, I mean and there are some roles where it's quite easy like sales is a direct correlation right I go sell something you know that we booked the deal company makes the money I get paid for commission easy.

[00:44:25] But when you move into sort of some other functions that maybe not even be customer facing like you know take HR for example like how does HR like how does a recruiter affect revenue and EBITDA.

[00:44:35] Well, you know like they do that by go hiring great people and getting them through the door quickly right because the faster we find great people getting through the door, the faster you know then the HR team can get them on boarded.

[00:44:46] And then we can get them operating and then they're either in revenue or protecting revenue, and you know the quality of that higher and the speed of that higher as a direct business impact which you know impact results which impacts partners.

[00:44:59] Last question for me Steve is you've interacted through your career you've interacted with boards. And some better than others and all that other stuff. What's your advice to senior leaders CEOs on board management and and board interaction.

[00:45:18] Yeah, I mean, all boards are different right it's just like people and you know like whether they're private companies public companies.

[00:45:28] You know, small family owned companies. I think you've got to understand the wants and the needs of the people right like, you know some some board members can be very, you know, tactical around a certain function you know if they've got a product background.

[00:45:44] They're going to be interested more in products right obviously you know if you're a private equity company or your public company, the deal teams are always interested in the numbers and the finance right and still that's important.

[00:45:56] But I think like you know if you if you was to kind of look at some kind of some of the summary of things it's like, again that transparency. Nobody wants to be surprised.

[00:46:05] Like you can't turn up at the ball meeting and say we blew the bookings number. You know you've got you've got to start to kind of layering information and set expectations upfront.

[00:46:14] I think that's that's hugely important. I think the second thing I think is like making sure that you've got alignment. Right what is it that you're actually trying to go and achieve right because you know are you an innovation company are you a you

[00:46:28] are you a revenue growth company or costs. Are you a sensible growth company you know that is looking to grow profitability and I think like what making sure that you kind of aligned to that is important.

[00:46:40] And then really I think for me, and like I've learned this over my career is I want to work with people I like that really comes down to it like you know every credibility company everything else is great.

[00:46:52] But I want to work with people I like and I don't want people to sort of mistake that with people like me. Like I'm not looking to go work with a load of people like me I mean I'm enough. I'm enough for me right.

[00:47:04] Like I want to work with different people that have different perspectives and different views but just people are like that resonates a lot with me.

[00:47:16] Ryan, what do you got brother. Yeah I wanted to know real quick Steve I know we were at time here. Your stance on mentorship at the leadership level so people coming through the organization.

[00:47:29] You know everyone has mentors everyone does their thing but at the leadership level CEO chief executive. What is your stance there on mentorship should people seek leaders or mentorship if they do not already have it.

[00:47:43] Yeah, listen that's a really good question and for me this comes back to like a lot of things right. It's like some people do it as a box ticking exercise. I've got a mentor spoke to my mentor.

[00:47:55] I think one of the things is really important is to sit down and think about like what is it you actually need. Like, what do you need I mean like I know like me as a person like I know where my strengths are I know where my weaknesses are right and you know I've had enough time in my career to kind of know that.

[00:48:12] And so like I will kind of use people as like sounding boards to work through solutions and ideas to make sure that you know I'm tapping into a view and not just you know taking the Steve view of the world right.

[00:48:25] And so I think that's important but it's like you need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are and then you need to go find the right person that can help you because you know there are.

[00:48:34] I've met a lot of CEOs and a lot of C sweet people and just because you're a CEO doesn't mean the same as the next CEO and the next CEO and the CEO after that.

[00:48:44] I mean if I look back at my previous organization when I was at Verte for you know like a lot of people from the C sweet have gone on to be CEOs.

[00:48:53] So like you know I was GM there and the CEO of a recruiting company as CCO is now the CEO of a company in the technology space as CRO is now a CEO of a healthcare company.

[00:49:07] And so when you look at those CEOs we all have the title of CEO but like if you want to know how to go run a really effective customer role you know it's there if you want to know how to run a really effective sales or it's here.

[00:49:18] So I think it's like understand where is that you need help on what you need and then go find the right person that can give you it regardless you know of title and seniority. Right. Right.

[00:49:32] Jobs might walks off stage Steve Cox CEO of employee thank you so much for your time we know you're insanely busy but thank you for carving out time for the audience.