What Do I Do?

“What I don’t understand, Thomas,” said Rob Brighouse, my former boss, “is how a blog makes you money”.

It’s a fair question.

From the outside, it probably does look like I spend my time writing a blog and hosting a podcast. I do both, and I enjoy them. But together they take up about one day a week.

The rest of the time, I’m doing things that are less visible but hopefully even more useful (if it is possible to imagine such a thing).

Because Rob is, of course, right. The blog doesn’t make money at all.

The blog is how I think; the other four days are about doing.

But, seeing as he asked, here are a few examples of the actual work.

I’ve anonymised my clients here to avoid having to ask permission (and risk embarrassment if they say no) but if you’re one of my clients reading this and are happy to be named, just let me know and I’ll edit accordingly.

1: A local authority struggling to turn intent into delivery

So, what was the story?
A local authority wanted to accelerate the delivery of transport schemes. There was no shortage of ambition, and no shortage of capable people, but somehow they didn’t quite seem to be nailing pace.

And what did you do?
I spent time with the practitioners first - six hours of workshops, followed by one-to-one conversations - to understand what day-to-day delivery actually felt like and what the barriers were. Then I worked with them to develop an action plan to overcome these barriers. I spent time with the Director and Cabinet Member to agree those actions, with named owners and resources attached. I’m now staying involved as these actions move into delivery.

I’m intrigued. What was getting in the way?
As so often, it was largely in the mind. Officers were cautious. Partly because of learned experience, partly because they weren’t confident they’d be backed if they moved faster or tried something experimental and partly because they weren’t confident in the governance processes. As so often happens, when the officers stepped back, the politician stepped forward taking more decisions than he should have done and making the officers even less confident. Vicious circle territory.

Consultation processes were (as they are across the country) an issue. Please do listen to my podcast with Jasmine Palardy next week for some radical ideas in this space.

So has it all changed now?
Partly. The feedback I’ve had is that the work we’ve done together has made everyone feel more of a team. “Much more than a year ago, it feels like we are all pulling in the same direction”. But there’s more to do so I’m staying involved in a light-touch way for a few more months to make sure that the actions agreed become actions completed. You know as well as I do that in the absence of someone keeping score, these things can drift.

2: Customer experience in Rail

What was happening here?
The Rail Delivery Group is passionate about improving customer experience. As GBR is created, they wanted to make sure that all the great ideas for customer experience improvement generated in the previous structure aren’t lost.

What was the danger?
Let’s be honest. The railway has become rather introspective recently. The focus is all on org change. But there are lots of people right through the sector with great ideas to improve customer experience. Many of these have been knocked back repeatedly or got lost in governance: or it just wasn’t their time. The result is that these ideas are locked in peoples’ heads or in papers written for organisations about to be abolished.

So what did you do?
I interviewed people across the railway, at every level, to surface those buried ideas. Many were still great ideas so I treated them as unfinished work rather than failures. There’s an important principle here, by the way. Customers can often tell you their pain but are terrible at telling you the answer. It’s (good!) operational teams who know what needs to happen. I also spoke to teams at the Swiss and Austrian state railways (respectively the highest satisfaction in Europe and in the EU) to ask what they would do if given our railway to run.

And what was the result?
RDG now has a consolidated set of customer experience improvement ideas on the shelf. They’re all available in a single document (I also recorded a podcast and a video, just so people have multiple ways of receiving the information), ready to be picked up when the railway is ready to look outwards again.

3: Helping organisations be more innovative (without Innovation Theatre)

Is there a problem with innovation in transport organisations then?
Is the Pope a Catholic? Do bears… live.. in woods? Yes, yes there is. Across the year, I worked to try to help organisations understand what being an innovative organisation looks like. Spoiler: it’s not about having an accelerator.

So how did you do that then?
It obviously varied per organisation. But it was generally a single intervention. These only work with the most senior team, as these are the people who can change behaviour. So it was often a Board or Exec. Sometimes it was an awayday or a management conference. Sometimes it was a departmental workshop.

The crucial thing is that “Innovation” mustn’t be treated as something abstract — a programme, a model, or a label — and must be about everyday behaviour and decision-making.

So you’ve solved everything, right?
Well, no. That would be a big ask from an awayday. But I did give them a toolkit of named norms and behaviours they could choose to adopt. Genuinely, (and I’m not just saying this) I’ve run into people at events throughout the year and they’ve told me that some of them have stuck and been valuable. That’s fantastic. Obviously, I’d love to get stuck into helping all of them right through the process but it’s just a function of being a one-man-band that I do more awaydays than large projects. And also, to be fair, many organisations have a management conference or awayday budget (and need cool stuff to fill it), but don’t have a budget to transform their whole culture. So it works.

4: Commercial strategy that starts with the customer

What was the situation?
A rail operator was comfortable with its operational delivery (rightly!) but felt there was revenue being left on the table. They wanted to increase revenue by improving the end-to-end customer journey.

What was getting in the way?
Nothing dramatic; just the usual complexity of fares, retail and legacy processes, combined with them being busy running their railway.

So what did you do?
I wrote them a commercial strategy. Good fun this one: it was all very familiar territory from my time at Chiltern Railways. Nothing like a bit of nostalgia, eh?

What changed?
They now have a commercial plan! And are executing it. I know because I’m giving them a little tiny bit of help where they need it, but mostly they’re just getting on with it.

5: The Culture of Growing Businesses

So what’s this about then?
I’ve been lucky enough to support several VC-backed startups and PE-owned businesses. This is, of course, a world I know from my own time leading a startup. I’ve now got a nice portfolio of non-competing firms that I’m able to help.

What was the issue?
Well, they’re all different (and all brilliant, obviously) but one thing that stood out across many of them was that - as they plan to grow - they need to be more deliberate about their growth strategy and their own leadership. I was able to help them with both. After all, it’s so easy as a very small business to do everything by instinct - and then to outgrow it.

So how did you help them, cleverclogs?
I did for them exactly what my advisor at Snap did for me: acting as an experienced sounding board. And, my word, it’s so much easier to solve someone else’s problems than your own. Running a startup is so all-encompassing and immersive that you need someone else to help you see what matters. That’s why my advisor did for me, and it’s what I do for them.

Did you solve all of their problems?
100%. All fixed. Totally.

No, of course not. Startup life is a never-ending series of problems, interspersed with champagne when you close a funding round (though by the time the contract is signed, you’re already into the next run of problems so can’t enjoy it). But I think the external perspective is proving valuable, otherwise they wouldn’t keep asking me back.

Anything else?

Oh yes. I’ve spent quite a bit of time this year working on integrated transport: with an international transport authority, here at home, through the Mini Switzerland project and by turning years of thinking into an Integrated Transport Programme I’ll start delivering in the New Year. I’ve got my first clients signed up for that, which is great. It’s all about helping define what integrated transport actually is and understand how to deliver it through different organisational models.

I’ve also done quite a few Board sessions, generally with the brief to provide a perspective on what’s going on in the sector. They’ve been good fun.

And what Have You Learned?

Yeah, I can’t just tell you what I’ve been doing, can I?

This is a Freewheeling blog post - there needs to be a story or message.

Well, I think it’s that most organisations don’t lack ideas but they do lack confidence. Somehow, our sector has drained peoples’ confidence that they’re allowed to do the sensible things they already know they should probably be doing. A lot of my time is spent giving it back.