We caught up with award-winning CEO and change consultant Hamish Taylor for an exclusive interview.
Hamish, who has had a successful career in a number of high-profile business roles, talks about why he’s dubbed the 'master thief’, why the customer is always his starting point and how to gain competitive advantage.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Hamish Taylor
Can you give us a potted history of your career?
Potted career history? Okay, well, I started off in the wonderful world of toilet cleaners with Proctor and Gamble as a brand manager there, following an education that included a degree in economics at St Andrew’s and then a MBA in America on scholarship after that.
I then worked in consultancy for a few years, then I fell on my feet a bit I guess and ended up as Head of Brand Management at British Airways. It was a really exciting time to be there, I got to do some really exciting things like putting beds in to aeroplanes in the mid 90s.
Then I moved in to my first Chief Executive role, which was at Eurostar, first of all as Managing Director in the UK, and then I took over as Group Chief Executive. Then I ran a bank for a while, as Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s Bank.
For the last 10 years or so I have been on my own, working with organisations around the world on innovation, on how to put the customers at the centre and particularly around this whole idea of performance, and leadership performance.
You have been dubbed the Master Thief. How did this come about?
The Master Thief title came about a few years ago from the Inspired Leaders Network, based on my track record of stealing ideas from one place to another. To be honest, I had never realised I was doing that! I had gone from industry to industry, and if you are going from the non-railway man to the railway, or the non-airline man into the airline, or the non-banker into the bank, you have got to bring some other skill set or some other knowledge because otherwise they would have hired the banker or the airline man.
So, I got naturally in to this idea of bringing skill sets from one industry to another – some of the Proctor and Gamble disciplines in to the airline, what I learnt at the airline to the railway, and it kind of came naturally as it was the only way I could add any credibility where I went.
But then, I took it to another level and said ‘well, what if you did that deliberately?’ and that’s when I started using things like using yacht designers to do beds in aeroplanes, or Disney to help with the queuing at the airports, because I started looking for other places where there was a pocket of skill that the particular challenge merited having a look at.
Are there similarities in how you bring about change within companies?
I think it is fair to say that the method I have used in each of the organisations I have gone in to has been very similar; it always has the customer right at the centre of the change. Whatever the issue is, whether it is a company like Eurostar loosing £200 million a year, or whether it’s British Airways trying to get up to the next level, it’s always about changing the way you look at the customer, as your starting point.
If you look at your customers in the same way as you did before you get the same answers and keep doing the same things. So, you change the way you look at the customer, you use that learning to look at a new way of putting the customer at the centre of the business, then you look to other sources of inspiration, but it always starts with the customer.
How do you approach working with large organisations?
I think the interesting thing about going in to a large company is they are a large company because they have been successful! So I can’t go in there and pretend that I am some expert who is going to show them everything – they are already successful at what they do. All I am doing is bringing in an injection of outside thinking, and outside perspective.
It is difficult sometimes because of course in every organisation you have some very successful people who have got successful by doing things a certain way, and you’re an agent of change, you’re a catalyst, you’re asking them to do something different, and for some people they will embrace that and love it while others will resist it.
In British Airways we used to call it reverse football, the idea being that in reverse football there are 22 referees for every player instead of the other way round. 22 people saying ‘well, you may have done that with your toilet cleaners but your not doing it with my aircraft’ and the idea is to spot the players. Don’t assume that you can take everybody on at the same time; it won’t happen, spot the players and work with them.
What is the idea behind customer benefits?
Customer benefits I use a lot, and this is the whole idea – that you need to change the platform for your activity. If you want to get a change in what you do, instead of thinking about describing what you do, the idea is that you think ‘what is the benefit to the customer as a result of me being brilliant?’ What you are actually doing is changing your job description.
So in British Airways we used to talk about how good our product was, you then change that so it’s all about helping people arrive ready for business. I worked with a bank recently where it was all about the banking products, whereas what the customer was actually interested in was their ambition as a business, so you need to do everything in terms that.
If you take something like your business – if you take something like NMP Live for example, what business are you actually in? Yes, you provide speakers or comedians, but if you think about what you’re really in the business of, you’re in the business of inspiration; I guess you are in the business of education sometimes, and probably in the business of entertainment. That is what your companies are looking for, and I suspect that most of the time it is all three or a combination. That is what your customer gets. Now, how the customer gets that is because you are very good at sourcing speakers but what the customer is interested in is inspiring their people, or educating their people or entertaining their people, so that’s how you have to see your business and that is how the model would work.
How does a company gain competitive advantage?
Competitive advantage, for me, comes from four challenges that I think any business faces.
First of all, you have got to understand the customer better than your competitors do. Everybody, at the press of a button on the Internet these days can get lots of information and data about customers. Your job is that you have got to get something, some sort of understanding about the customer, that no one else has got yet. That involves looking at the customer a different way, and different techniques, and that’s what I talk about quite a lot – is different ways.
Secondly, you have got to create a platform for what you are trying to do that sets an ambition that is competitive. There is no point in saying ‘we are going in this direction’, you’ve got to say ‘we are going that far in this direction!’, that we are going to be better, or we are going to be the best, or we are going to be the first, or we are going to be the only. Words like that are actually really important when you set the ambition because they do make a big difference to whether you become competitive or not.
Thirdly, you have got to find sources of inspiration that competitors are not getting. If you only look at what is going on in your own industry then you are not getting a competitive advantage, you are just copying everybody else! So, you have got to find a way of articulating your issues in a way that you can go in to other industries, other disciplines, other places, to find ideas that you can bring in.
And then the fourth one is, don’t forget that you can be hugely competitive by the way you talk to other customers – there are huge examples of corporations whose products or service are actually not much better than anybody else’s, but they connected with the customer in a way that others couldn’t. It’s just as valid a way of becoming competitive as changing your product.
What’s the difference between your keynote talk and a workshop or masterclass?
In my keynote presentations I’m telling stories, and they’re war stories about Eurostar, or British Airways, or Proctor and Gamble, and I’m bringing to life the concepts that I talk about – about looking at the customer in a different way, creating a new platform for how you drive forward, looking to ideas from new places or changing they way you engage – the kind of four challenges. But they are stories that I am bringing to life and hopefully inspiring you to think about here’s lessons that I have learned and maybe there is something in here for you.
You take those same principles in to workshops and master classes, but this time what you are doing is the same stories but you say ‘now lets have a go at it in your context, lets write your customer promise, lets look at your customer understanding, lets look for your issues - where else we can go to find other places.’ So it’s an extended version of the keynote in many ways but actually with some practical workshops where we are going to go and actually do it. That is one type of master class and workshop.
The other one is where I physically take people into other environments, where we focus just on ‘where else can we learn?’ and I will actually bring in those people, or we will go and see them ourselves. Let’s go down to the RNLI down in Poole and Dorset and look at how they do speed and efficiency, lets find out what they do, let’s go talk to some musicians about how they engage with their audience, lets go talk to the army about how they make decisions under pressure and in crisis situations.
So sometimes it can actually be about bringing other people in, or taking people to other places when they have already defined their issue, but what they are looking for is new inspiration.
What makes a successful speaker?
The speakers that I see are all so totally different, and they have all got a message, and you get some that are like me that can leap around the stage like a mad thing, and some that are far more cerebral and sit back, and I don’t think it matters, I think you see a multitude of different styles – I don’t think it’s about the style.
For me the things I try and work on and learn from, are first of all, and most of all, that it’s got to be real, and it’s got to be practical. So, I’m telling real stories about real situations as somebody that’s actually done it. I have been there in a business that is loosing £200 million, I have had to do turnarounds, and I think it is really important that people don’t just hear academic stories, they hear from somebody that’s actually had to do it, because that learning is very different to writing the theory about it.
You have got to engage with the audience, you have got to make it relevant. I am going in to lots of different industries, lots of different disciplines, which are not necessarily ones that I have worked in, or ones that I have been in, so I have got to build the link so that they understand that even though I am telling a story about British Airways, here is why the principles that came out of it are actually very relevant to you.
So I see myself partly as a translator, so it’s not just tell my story but act as a translator as well so that the guy sitting there can see what they might do differently tomorrow at their desk as a result of it, rather than just ‘that was a nice story about the airline, but I’m not sure what it means’.
At the end of your presentation, how do you want your audience to feel?
When the audience leave the auditorium I hope they feel enthused that it’s actually very simple. Although the tasks you put all the complexity of your own business on seem tough, there are actually some very simple ways of approaching it that can help inspire you to look at it in a different way and find new and exciting ways of approaching those challenges.
That’s what I want people to think. Yes, it’s nice if they have been entertained, yes, it’s nice if they think oh that’s quite an interesting story and I found out a bit about the airlines or the railways, but more importantly I want them to go out thinking ‘I can do this!’
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