Meet our guest, Dave Vernon, an award-winning guru in contact centre planning and workforce management. With two decades of industry experience under his belt, Dave takes us on a riveting journey through the world of workforce planning. He unravels the layers of the industry, starting with the importance of an efficient workforce in business operations. He explains how proper planning of this resource can help maintain a balance between the needs of the customer, the colleague, and the operations.
As we shift gears into proactive Intra Day operations, Dave enlightens us on the revolutionary role of technology in contact centre operations. He talks about the need to look out for colleagues and customers alike while keeping a keen eye on meeting the company's objectives in real-time. Smaller contact centres aren't left out either, as we delve into methods of justifying the cost of Workforce Management. We also discuss the intricate balance of meeting customer needs and maintaining operational efficiency.
The last leg of our discussion takes us through the importance of training and knowledge sharing, especially within smaller contact centres. Dave joins us in exploring how to bridge the gap between planning teams and the top executives. From his expansive career journey, he brings to light the challenges of demonstrating the value of planning and workforce management. As we wrap up, Dave leaves us with invaluable advice on team management and development, reminding us of the importance of setting clear boundaries and understanding the consequences of our decisions. Join us for this insightful conversation, where we don't just learn about contact centre planning and management, but also gain invaluable career advice along the way.
Meet our guest, Dave Vernon, an award-winning guru in contact centre planning and workforce management. With two decades of industry experience under his belt, Dave takes us on a riveting journey through the world of workforce planning. He unravels the layers of the industry, starting with the importance of an efficient workforce in business operations. He explains how proper planning of this resource can help maintain a balance between the needs of the customer, the colleague, and the operations.
As we shift gears into proactive Intra Day operations, Dave enlightens us on the revolutionary role of technology in contact centre operations. He talks about the need to look out for colleagues and customers alike while keeping a keen eye on meeting the company's objectives in real-time. Smaller contact centres aren't left out either, as we delve into methods of justifying the cost of Workforce Management. We also discuss the intricate balance of meeting customer needs and maintaining operational efficiency.
The last leg of our discussion takes us through the importance of training and knowledge sharing, especially within smaller contact centres. Dave joins us in exploring how to bridge the gap between planning teams and the top executives. From his expansive career journey, he brings to light the challenges of demonstrating the value of planning and workforce management. As we wrap up, Dave leaves us with invaluable advice on team management and development, reminding us of the importance of setting clear boundaries and understanding the consequences of our decisions. Join us for this insightful conversation, where we don't just learn about contact centre planning and management, but also gain invaluable career advice along the way.
Welcome to CX Diaries. Cx Diaries from the Customer Experience Foundation is our podcast where we talk to the people at the sharp end of contact centres and CX, the movers and the shakers, the innovators, the disruptors and the people delivering in the real world who share their personal stories of their journey through our industry. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Dave Vernon. Dave is an award winning industry recognised expert with 20 years experience in contact centre planning management and has held senior planning positions at blue ship companies such as NTL, mark Codd, hboss and the AA. He's been at the forefront of driving best practice in contact centre planning through nine years as head of membership at the forum, with the aim of professionalising the contact centre planning industry. Dave, welcome, it's a pleasure to have you with us this afternoon.
Speaker 2:Welcome, Keith. We'd love to be here.
Speaker 1:So the forum. For those that don't know about the forum, tell us all about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So we're an industry body that's here to support people across contact centres and also in wider planning functions. So we're there for people who are doing all the planning in contact centres insights, analytics and also quality and also customer experience professionals. We also help people in niche planning, such as back office, field and branch. And we're a learning organisation. We also have learning offerings and modularised virtual learning offering across all these disciplines so people can come along, do something out of their normal role, try to get people to learn, professionalise and let people develop and be involved and also bring them into a community of best practice. So that's what we're all about here at the forum.
Speaker 1:Why is there a need for that kind of organisation?
Speaker 2:I think it's very easy, keith, when we're in our organisations even if you've had a diverse career you might work at like three, four, five organisations through your work in life what the forum gives you is access to you know, 150, 160 people, corporate organisations where people can actually kind of reach out and say I'm facing this problem and usually someone's been through it before.
Speaker 2:So we can give access to that and let people kind of fast track what they're trying to do.
Speaker 2:And also people love to share things like the gotchas, those pitfalls that we've all been through, those battle scars that we have from those difficult moments in our career, and kind of help people understand you know how to avoid them or you know if they're going through them, to kind of really learn from that and take that forward. So that's kind of why we need it. And also, you know, many times these are quite small teams in big organisations so it's sometimes can feel a bit insular and you know, we kind of know what you know within your organisation and we accept that all organisations have differences but there's some different kind of you know, standard ways of operating that run through all organisations. So we allow that to kind of come together and we get members talking. You know we might have healthcare members talking to large financials, but still, you know, dealing with similar issues, and it just allows people to kind of, you know, really get some extra pair of eyes on what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what's your role at the Foundation?
Speaker 2:So at the Forum my role is a director, so I've kind of been away and come back. And it was good to be away because I went and worked in Bender World in the contact centre. So I worked for a WFM organisation as a principal solution consultant. So, coming back to the Forum, it's kind of allowed me to take those two lenses and bring that together. And I came back to the Forum as a director to kind of really push on and try and grow the community, really push forward our learning agenda Also, take forward our standards framework, which is about allowing people to understand how they compare to other organisations, how their planning function, insight function kind of stacks up against the framework and also stacks up against the industry and I'll those people to kind of step out and also do some standards work as well.
Speaker 2:So it was about coming back and really kind of pushing that forward and really kind of growing the community, which you know we've. You know it's over 156 corporate organisations and so it helps to. You know, the more we get, the more lenses we get, the more kind of best practice we get, and with the awards programme as well, that really encapsulates it all together. So yeah, that's, that's what I have come back to the Forum to do, keith.
Speaker 1:So talk to us about this is the long subject. Talk to us about why planning and WFM is important, why business needs to do it. Go at well.
Speaker 2:And then WFM is important. Well, most organisations your workforce is your most expensive resource, that's usually your biggest cost on your balance sheet, and most organisations contact centres, back office, field operations, branches are very heavy on that front, facing people, and you want to be able to do that as efficiently as possible and try and kind of forecast what's coming down within your organisation and put that supply the best supplies you can to that kind of anticipated demand. Get that wrong can be very expensive but also can very damaging for your brand. If you've got lots of you know course queuing, you know things not being answered, not getting back to people, that can really kind of cause, cause issue. So planning is there to kind of as I always see it, keith, we're there to kind of keep that tension. It's kind of three lenses within our world. We've got the customer. Obviously we need to be there for our customer and we want to try and make sure that we've got the right people in the right place at the right time with the right skill. But we've also got to have that colleague lens across it as well. So, understanding that, yeah, you know we hit the best shift pattern might be everybody working every weekend, but colleagues, you know people aren't going to work. That that's not going to work from a work life balance perspective. We're not going to retain our staff. So with any efficiencies we get from, that is lost in you know our attrition and people walking out the door. So we're kind of trying to build all that.
Speaker 2:And then the final thing is obviously our corporate. You know targets, what the, you know what our organization is trying to deliver. You know be that kind of first call resolution, kind of improve our you know net promoter score. It's kind of those three things trying to hold that together and a good planning team will try and deliver that and kind of also that will move certain points. That'll be all about the customer. If you think about a retail environment, gold and quarter we can't be abandoned. In course we can't be losing that revenue. So we focus on customer. Other times it's all about the colleague and them getting that time away to develop and get through training if we're putting in new systems. And then also for the corporate to make sure that we deliver on what we've set out.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if someone's new to planning, tell us what the basics of planning are, give us the whistle stop guide to the basics of planning, basic blocks Yep.
Speaker 2:So basic planning. What plan is all about is obviously we have a planning cycle that's well published out there. So the first point is obviously it's around forecasting. It's around getting that understanding what's coming through the door be that in widgets, be it calls and then also kind of having that as a longterm plan. So we've got the demand of what's coming in, but then also understanding what we think the supply will be. Against that, looking at assumptions such as average handling, time, productivity, utilization, adherence and things like that.
Speaker 2:So that's like kind of top level segment has kind of been able to say this is what's coming in, this is what we think is the people we need to kind of handle what's coming in. And then we have the scheduling and allocating resource. So that's about building the shifts, trying to match up the demand over kind of an intraday period. So working through the days and the intervals. So making sure Monday's our busiest day, we've got the most people in on Monday. If Friday's our quietest day, at least people on the Friday, and then kind of working all the intervals in between that. And then we usually lock that down because people wanna know when they're working. So there's usually a horizon around that of four to six weeks where we kind of put that down and then we've got kind of the tactical planners who are there to make sure that plan that's all been put together happens, those assumptions are delivered against and if there's any deviation on those assumptions that's kind of called back to feed back into the forecasting capacity to make that better.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of how the planning cycle works as we work through and that's why it's really important and that's why what we've been trying to do over the last we've been I think we're out 23rd year this year is around taking sort of this mystery away and making this a profession. As most of us in this profession, keith, in planning we've all been kind of probably worked as agents or team leaders and kind of fell or kind of moved into this area because we have some acumen around numbers and things like that. We want to bring this together so that planning and contact centers are a whole scene. It's like HR, it, finance. We wanna really kind of make sure that people work into this. It's really important to us that we bring that next generation of people through, especially with this hybrid working world. Now it's kind of how do you get visibility of planning as much if you're not in the office. So, yeah, that's what kind of planning is all around and that's what we've been trying to kind of make planning become.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you've talked to us about the planning horizon and locking that down. Talk to us about Intra Day, because the organizations I've worked at the Intra Day people seem to be they're always very, very busy. So talk to us about the fine art of Intra Day management.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the fine art of Intra Day. So Intra Day can be kind of seen as near time planning or on the day planning, but it can be looking it's a close horizon, maybe a week out, and bringing that on today. And it's about controlling the intervals. It's about making sure that most of we have the technology now that breaks down our intervals into kind of 15 minutes. So it's trying to deliver throughout the day a consistent service through that, the skills around it.
Speaker 2:Keith, it's around being proactive. It's very easy to kind of just get caught moving things around in the day, but if we can always get ahead of it it kind of really helps. And I think we've got, as you said, always seem really busy, but I think there is a kind of a shift coming out. There is technology out there that's helping that Intra Day world where there's more kind of automation. Those Intra Day people are moving away from just kind of maybe moving skills around to actually being kind of looking at rules and things like that, writing rules into systems, into the real-time automation products that are out there To try and make proactive decisions. And I think also I think the days have gone, I'm sure in your day you might have seen that the Intra Day seemed very busy, but also kind of maybe seen as the people that said no, you know, to things.
Speaker 1:You know, cancel your training session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cancel your training session. It was all about that and it was kind of customer it was always. You know we're talking about those three lenses. It was around customer and corporate. You know that's people need to be for the customer and that delivers our kind of. You know the arbitrary 80, 20,. You know 80% of calls in 20 seconds, no rhyme or reason why that's been set. That is again changing now. People are setting different service levels around what's right for their company, rather than the 80, 20, which actually comes from. That was just what was coded into the original WFMs all those years ago. It was just that was what was put in there. We left it on that default setting. But that you know.
Speaker 2:We ran a real-time virtual networking group this week and we're actually talking about what are we doing for our colleagues and I think that you know the real-time view is now changing to kind of like I've got to look after my colleagues as well. It can't be just about the customer, because you know we've been through a massive problem with recruitment and attrition. It's just about settling down the hybrid world after COVID. The colleagues are so important now and we're having the real-time.
Speaker 2:People now are actually having to think you know what we might have to sacrifice some customer today and some of our corporate goals because we've got to do this for the colleague and try to articulate that back up the chain now and align in that. And real-time people are trying to kind of really understand what their strategic goals are of that company and align in what they're doing to line into that. You know, if we've got a colleague first sort of program, our real-time, you know, should be delivering a colleague first program. Yeah, they've got to look after the customer and the performance as well. But yeah, so it is a more rounded role now and I think that's been the challenge for those people over the last couple of years is coming around to that mentality.
Speaker 1:Very, very interesting. A lot of organizations have quite large planning teams because they've got quite large service operations. I know myself, when I ran NHS Direct we had one of the biggest planning teams in the country and they did an amazing job. What would you say to our listeners that are perhaps running a smaller or a micro contact centre that might have 15 staff, 20, 25 staff? They haven't got a team, they've got cost justification issues. They probably can't afford or haven't looked at the latest WFM. What would you say to those sort of businesses? How do you as an organization go about that?
Speaker 2:I think it's being clear in what you're trying to do and also if we've got a really small centre, is really rolling down to. We expect agents and team leaders to understand this stuff but often it's kept away from them. We've done a lot of training with some big organizations around getting their team leaders and the agents to understand why certain things happen in a contact centre. Taking them through. What is shrinkage? What does that mean? It's a real, it's basic terms. It basically means you're not with a customer and I'm paying you. Now that's not a problem because that's right. We've got to give you holidays. You will have some time off for absences and things like that. But in the office we also need people to kind of be doing one-to-ones and things like that. But we don't kind of share this kind of base information of why things aren't. So I think if you're in a small centre, it's making sure that your team leaders and agents kind of understand those basic principles of contact centre.
Speaker 2:Things like the power of one, the difference one person makes. That service level isn't linear. We lose two people. That could be the difference between an 80% service level and a 40% service level and in these small centres especially one person matters, but I think it's getting through that everybody matters.
Speaker 2:I think if we can give that kind of understanding, people tend to not go to work to do a bad job. So if we can give this understanding you'll find that actually you'll probably get a bit of self-management out of those areas and sort of like a, as you say, keith, wfm and planning teams. They kind of come in really above that sort of 45, 50, fde organisations Below that. I think we give that knowledge and if you've got somebody who's got a bit of Excel skills that you can pick, we have calculators that can be used and some basic principles that can be used to help those people through. But I think it's really important massive assumptions in our industry. That kind of everyone understands why it's important that you're there when you're shoving and it generates different behaviours that we expect from people than normal kind of office-based roles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and talking about that influencing, how do planners and how do you, as the former, help the planning departments help influence the execs and senior managers about the importance of it and the ROI of what you're delivering?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we had some great help in that, keith. It was called COVID Because that really focused minds around what the power of planning been able to kind of it wasn't just about getting the technology to get people on, it was being able to kind of still make sure that we had the people there, that they were rostered rightly, and bringing in all these different ways of working now that have come in. I think that's been a great benefit for the support functions and the contact centre. It's shown what they can deliver and what they can do, and that's been a massive movement with the execs. I think what we're still trying to do is make sure that it would be great if every organisation had a director of planning, like there's a director of HR, there's a director of finance, and that is more prevalent.
Speaker 2:We're seeing that role becoming more prevalent now because there is an understanding there, because a lot of the time planning is the enabler of finance's great and wonderful plans to happen, and I think that's where we're kind of working through the organisations with finance and planning work, handing glove if there's a direct lead to kind of CFOs and stuff like that, and also I think the CFO and chief customer officers they're the kind of ones that we can really kind of influence and explain what we do and how it impacts them.
Speaker 2:For them to kind of go to the other parts of the C-suite, I'd say it's work in progress, keith. It's still not there, but it's definitely been massively accelerated over the last three years and it's not seen now that, oh, you know, the support function is just a cost centre. You know pretty much how the contact centre reviewed as a cost centre back in the day. I think that's now changing, that. We need these, you know. We need the technology, we need the teams to really enable us to make sure that we deliver on what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and very much about that efficiency message that you started off with, I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is around that efficiency. But it's also about making sure that you know we do protect. You know all these kind of great and wonderful colleague plans that everybody have for their organisation. It's usually the planners that have to make it happen. It's got to be scheduled, it's got to be put in, it's got to be understanding. You know there's a cost behind that and that's understanding. And that's not saying it's wrong. It's just saying that if we're doing this, you know there's probably. You know it's kind of explaining that yeah, it might be extra 3%, 4% on your shrinkage target, but if we're going to offset that against the 8% reduction on attrition, there's probably the right thing to do. So it's just kind of bringing that together and just explaining the situation that these great strategic plans that you have when it brings down to the bottom end that this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Amazing, and where does it go wrong?
Speaker 2:It does it go wrong? How?
Speaker 2:does it go. I think it goes wrong when there's not that alignment or we get that top down sort of ethos that you know people make. You know what we call the hippos, the highest paid persons opinion. Whenever we see top down methodology and little bottom up coming back and it's just that sort of like C-Suite's made a decision and it's a real tell, command and control, coach Keith, that's when it tends to go wrong. Sometimes the planning team's not brave enough to push back and just feel that they've just got to go with it. It's tough to push back, especially if you're pushing back maybe two or three layers above. You know, in the hierarchy it is a tough one to do. But that's what we see. You know, even now. You know we've seen that, haven't we across the industry, with a lot of these hybrid working kind of initiatives constantly changing as maybe a new person comes in, people want to kind of go back to what they had and we can't really go back to that. So I think that's when it goes wrong. It's when it's it's top down, we don't get any kind of movebook and we're not brave enough to push back to go.
Speaker 2:You know what. You know those assumptions that you're putting in. You know we can make any sort of cost saving on the spreadsheet. But you know if we're slicing 120 seconds off a HT, who's going to make that happen? Not the planning team. You know that needs to go to the operation and they kind of are they an agreement that they've got strategies in place to do that? And if we're just taking it out flat, well, that's not how it usually works. If we're, you know it's usually a glide path that's removed down. Is these sort of things when they they happen like that, keith, or kind of falls apart?
Speaker 1:Okay, really interesting. Thank you more personally, Dave. Talk us through your journey through the industry. How did you get started? How did you end up where you are today?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I've had a bit of a circulation over the last kind of month or so Because I went back to actually the site I started at to run a leaders of the future program there with with intra DM which was actually. I started working for Mercury Communications back in 1995 as a billing agent which was a challenger to BT Very fortunate to go in and that is now Virgin Media and I'll back to the Virgin Media site at with ensure. So it was very odd walking back into where I used to kind of be an agent and kind of looking how things have changed and things have moved on. But I was very lucky at that point because, because it was a brand new setup contact center, it would actually brought in an American company called Trinity Horn to set it up. I was first consultants, remember those guys. So it was set up with with this kind of methodology. That was really cutting edge at that point, which was all around, you know ACDs were in, wfm was in in 97. One of the first ones, tcs came in. So I was there as an agent. That a great step up to a proper step up to leadership program. We'd go to the unit of keep because of part cable, and why shall cable and wireless university down at Coventry, keith. So just fortunately, you know, coming in at that point ain't quite new and the, you know the contact center was quite new.
Speaker 2:As you've been there, you kind of, you know, moved up and I moved up to a team leader and part of the deal was you can be a team leader. You have always lovely development be a team leader, but you do the night shift, you do the full mid night shift. That was your deal, that was your kind of where you that the gift to get. So I did that. And then it got into looking at WFM and things like that. So I started looking after the schedules on the evening. Then I worked off, went to work on dialers. So we went and did a couple years on dialers and this was all happening and through this time it was transitioning from Mercury to cable and wireless to NTL.
Speaker 2:And then I left there after eight years and went to be resource planning manager for sorry, it was service live manager for Barclay card, and that's when I started to managing dual sites. And then a lot of the sort of skills came from being able to kind of understand how to manage remote teams and things like that H boss looking after their service delivery team. There they went to the as national planning manager. So again that was looking after all that. What they were doing was getting into the indoor resource because obviously they've got the patrols out.
Speaker 2:But then we did this dispatch area. That was dispatching and that came to me. So I started getting some looking into into field and things like that. And then we won an award with the foot with what was the planning form at that point because we did a massive piece of work with Boston consulting when OCNC bought the AA. That's when I came to the forum and did nine years here and then so I've been to work for aspect software as a solutions consultant and then come back here. So it's been a been a 23 year journey. But again, winding right back to the start, that agent point to move in. You know that I think that's really still really important, that I think there's always a great wealth within our agent population of people have got skills that you don't know, that are there, that I think the hybrid culture makes it harder to pick those out, but I think there's always great opportunity to kind of bring people through into our you know, into this sphere really.
Speaker 1:What are the most proud of? What the biggest achievements?
Speaker 2:Big achievements. Well, the award that we won back in 2007 at the AA, that was a great achievement. You know. We did a lot of work to make things more efficient and took about 12 million pound out of a 32 million pound budget. It was painful because working with it was really.
Speaker 2:I'm known as well, keith, working with venture capitalists to see how they function and where they focus on, so that really, kind of, was one of the good things was going through that and surviving. That was that was good. Well, you know, coming up from it just shows now I sort of as an agent I didn't have a degree at that point and it just shows you how far you can come through in this industry if you've got, you know, vocational skills. I did do a degree course as I went through. I wanted to do that, so I picked up a kind of a BSC or I was going through what I was doing. But I think it's, you know, I think I'm proud that I've managed to kind of do this for the 2025 years and I really enjoyed it. A career, and I'm not done yet, so I've got a few years left yet.
Speaker 1:Talk about some of the challenges you face. What's perhaps the biggest issues that you overcome?
Speaker 2:issues I've had to overcome Is that in kind of professionally?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all personally. Whatever you want to talk about, yeah, I think it's been.
Speaker 2:I think what we've had to overcome is kind of the what was the value that we can bring? You know it was often seen like you know, the manager in the corner. They're the ones that'll say no to your holidays. I can remember getting introduced to that at one of the roles I was in as a manager and I remember calling can I have a word? You know we're taking the inductees round and this is what you're telling them. So I think it was kind of trying to get through you know what we could do in showing what we can do.
Speaker 2:And I took a lot of teams, keith, who've been kind of a kind of brow beaten. They kind of lost the confidence to just kind of and really they were just glorified admin teams and that's kind of the was always overcome was kind of setting out clear purposes, clear kind of boundaries and spans of control, because I think that's it can be clear. You know you own that, we own that. This is where we interact, this is where we join. You know, making sure we have that, that kind of cadence as we work through, kind of you know we'll have touch points and understand, because there's always that tension between an operation and a planning team, because we're there to challenge each other and we're there to deliver for the customer, for the colleague and the corporate goals.
Speaker 2:And I think being able to kind of go through that and develop people as well you know, I think that's one of the things I'm really kind of want to overcome is that most of the time they were just kind of giving a WFM and just show what buttons to press and then when something spat out wrong, no one picked it up, it just said, well, that's what comes out of the computer. So it's kind of getting making people understand what was coming out. You know what was rolling around. And then the other thing I jumped to the forum is that I wanted to make sure that, you know, these people get developed as much as agents, as much as team leaders, as much as our ops people, and that's still a challenge now to get that development for these specialist roles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that the survey in planning the ability to adapt, the agile react, is vastly underestimated. It's not just about, like you say, the programming of the software, it's that ability to react. And I often, I often think about when I ran NHS direct and I would sometimes turn up at a site and say, right, I'm taking 200 people off the phones for an hour to do a little bit of a town hall with them and I could, I could hear the intraday team just crying into their, into their cups of tea about how they were going to, how they were going to cope with that for the next hour and a half and they're not going to impact for the rest of the day, the week or the month. I suppose and I think that comes back to what you've talked about is it's not just about customer and and corporate, is about a colleague as well that ability to adapt really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think before that that's the way most of most of what have reacted. But it's now it's like and that's fine, keith, you take them off, that's fine. That's great for those people. Yeah, and as long as you understand that, and this is what's going to happen because of it but I'm just telling you, you know it's, but it's not kind of kind of shouting at you for it, it's just put, it's just, it's just pointing out the impacts but saying, you know, that's great, because what you're saying today is actual priority is that you want to speak to those people. So we're going to make that priority. This is what it's going to do over here and we will do what we can to mitigate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So, as you know, dave, we always like to ask our guests to reflect and help those coming up from the industry, as we did. So you can go back to being 25 again, and what advice would you give to younger self?
Speaker 2:That is a good one, right, you can't do everything yourself. Yes, as much as you think you can. It took me a while to realise that. You know you need to delegate and when you delegate it doesn't probably come right exactly how you want it. It will come back. You know, if it comes back, 70% done how you want it, that's a great effort and the be accepting of that, yeah, and then through that process, make sure that you kind of trust your people.
Speaker 2:Don't micro manage. I think it's really hard, especially when you're an experienced manager, to try and want to see everything because you don't want to make a mistake. You're not micro managing. So kind of setting out the you know, the trust with your people, but also kind of explaining that there is consequences of that. I'm going to give you a latitude. I'm going to tell you how to get to the end goal. You can get there, but you need to get there. You know that's that. I'm giving you that space. If you don't deliver, then that's not on. There'll be a consequence behind that. I think sometimes we forget. We have to kind of lay out to people that, yeah, I'm going to give you this space to do it, but you know there is a good. If it doesn't happen. There is some consequences around that. Saying no, I think that's really a strong thing to do it.
Speaker 2:And but giving the why you're saying no, talk to the story behind it as well, and, I think, just understanding that if you've been in an organization for a long time and move to another organization that happens to me early, you know, after I've done eight years at cable, and why so I went to one of the financials and I lost all that business knowledge and that was a real struggle, that was a real shock to me because I kind of knew everything and I didn't know everything is that you have to understand that you cannot know everything.
Speaker 2:You know some roles you will. You'll get to know a business inside out, but some you just kind of need to pick the main things you need to know and you'll hear everybody tell you that every organization is different and there are, but there is, you know, similar is all the way through that you can pick up and when you move roles and move through as you move up that career ladder, you can't know as much, you can't get as far down as you used to be able to and you just have to kind of let that go and hopefully trust your people to kind of know that knowledge key, that that would be my, my tip.
Speaker 1:Absolutely fantastic, dave, and I would completely endorse all of that my career too. So how do I want an escape, or would you like to get up to outside of work?
Speaker 2:Well, I am unwinding an escape from it right now because you might notice, you might go that's, that's a strange background behind. I'm actually my caravan in Wales near Snowden. So I kind of, with this new hybrid world, I try and work out of you a lot of the summer, so that kind of allows me to unwind. I do listen to a lot of heavy metal and things like that. So I'm into bands like slipknot and Slayer and Metallica and things like that. I often go to download and things like that. So yeah, and it's a rock and roll lifestyle doesn't really fit with the caravan, but that's what I like to do, and then, on the flip side, that I also do like to go on cruisers as well. So, a bit of an anomaly. Keep us all chance to keep that rebellious Pete, but I am kind of moving into that kind of cruising. That sounds nice Caravan, that sounds nice.
Speaker 1:Amazing, dave. It's been wonderful having you with us today. Thank you so much for great insights and I hope our listeners found this as insightful as I have. You can find out lots more about the customer experience foundation at CxOorg and we hope you can join us next time on Cx Diaries.