Good news is bad news delivered early, with Tech Exec Brett Wiskar
No one likes bad news, but as a leader, it’s your responsibility to get ahead of it. When Brett Wiskar said during our interview, "Good news is bad news delivered early," it really resonated. Surprises are rarely welcome, and as leaders, it's our job not only to manage them but to stay ahead of them.
In this candid episode, I chat with Brett, a seasoned tech executive, about his rollercoaster leadership journey. Tune in to hear three impactful leadership lessons that have reshaped his approach—and could very well change yours too.
I’m saving the lightbulb moments for the episode, but here’s a glimpse of what Brett unpacks:
The crucial leadership skill most avoid (yes, it involves those uncomfortable conversations).
Why adaptability is more valuable than being right.
How to align your team for success.
Beyond the lessons, this episode offers a rare inside look at the life of an executive—his day-to-day challenges, the tough decisions, and what it truly takes to lead at the top. Add the podcast to your listen list to deep dive into the real-world experiences of a leader navigating change and innovation.
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Episode Transcript:
Kate Peardon: 0:00
Brett Wisker, our guest today has spent the last 25 years in digital technology and innovation in Australia and the UK. He has worked with some of the largest brands in the country on their digital roadmap and innovation programs, is a recipient of numerous awards and a frequent speaker on the topics of innovation, adaptability. He's currently the head of digital innovation at Australian Catholic University by day and an innovation consultant and keynote speaker for the rest of the time. His role at Australian Catholic University is to plot the digital innovation pathways for the university, which impacts 2, 500 staff and more than 30, 000 students. Brett and I met about eight years ago, and I have been witness to his leadership journey over these years. As someone that has worked closely with him, I can share that he's never afraid to have the conversation, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable it is. And this is quite refreshing in a leader. Today, we're going to be jumping into three of his key leadership lessons. Communication, always have the conversation, which is exactly what I've experienced with him. How adaptability is the key and we're almost never right. So we need to be great at constant change and someone who focuses on innovation. This really makes sense that this is a key leadership lesson for him. And the third leadership lesson is about alignment. let's welcome our guest Brett Wiskar and jump into these leadership lessons and what his suggestions are for these one percenters, uh, whether books, phrases, or podcasts that really have helped him as a leader. Welcome Brett.
Brett Wiskar:2:06
Thanks, Kate. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Kate Peardon:2:09
So Brett and I met, I think it's probably about eight years ago. And I think through this eight years, you and I have witnessed a lot of each other's leadership journeys, the ups and the downs and the around the outside. and it has enabled me to see these leadership lessons that we're going to talk about today, I can see each of these leadership lessons and some of the experiences that we've had together, but I look forward to chatting through them today and see if how I've witnessed your leadership is actually how you see it from the inside as well.
Brett Wiskar:2:37
That will be interesting. Um, obviously very different from what everybody else sees. But yeah, it's a, I guess as we age and as we gain experience and as we interact with more and more people, we're all on a leadership journey. some of us more deliberately than others. And probably, you know, back when you and I first met, I think I'd been a leader in a lot of different situations for a long time, but at no point was it anything like conscious leadership. I was just doing what was in front of me and, found myself running a team of 60 people and never had considered what leadership looked like or what a methodology might look like, or how people saw me as a leader or how they wanted to be led. None of that stuff sort of entered into my conscious thought. I was just trying to get an outcome. over time from a group of people. And, it wasn't really planned. And, and, you know, probably in the last decade, as I've matured, and as I've worked with people like you, I probably have seen people who, take a more considered approach to leadership and try to deliberately, improve their skills as a leader and onboard different philosophies and methodologies and stuff to try to be, you know, better leaders for the people that they're leading. So somewhere on the line, I probably flipped that switch and became a little bit more conscious about it.
Kate Peardon:3:42
I think your story is a perfect example of what so many people go through because often we get really good at what we're good at technically, and then because you're so good at what you do technically, whatever that job is that you've trained for, uh, you end up then getting a team of people doing what you do. Which is totally a different skillset and it's like starting your career at the start again, but no one tells you this. No one says, Hey, leadership is a completely different skillset and it's going to feel awkward. And it's something we need to practice and learn a bit about, and put in these new skills and tactics. But yeah, most people get thrown into it exactly like you were, which I think is a wonderful place to start. Cause thinking of your leadership journey, you say now leadership is a. conscious thought, and it's something that you focus on, but there wasn't always the case. Can you give us the cliffs notes or the highlights of how you've got
Brett Wiskar:4:31
Yeah, look,
Kate Peardon:4:31
are at the moment?
Brett Wiskar:4:33
I probably, um, you know, always was somebody who threw myself into whatever came along and I've had an odd career in that, what I studied at university. I never ended up working at and I worked in sort of different fields in different countries and doing different things. Bye. you know, I, I worked in the UK about 20 plus years ago, and I turned up into, into a very specific technical role, in an IT department, but it became a clear that the part of the reason they were recruiting there was that they'd had a failure in how that department functioned in that organization. And after I'd been there for about five minutes, what became abundantly clear was there was just a leadership void in that organ, in that part of that organization. And they were really looking for. something to change about that. and so, you know, in a very short window of time, I kind of went from being the new hire to the guy that I asked him to run, run that section, you know, of what was a global company that had sort of a few hundred staff and a few dozen or so offices around the globe. And they kind of went, can you be in charge of this? And I was like, yeah, I can be in charge of this. again, probably still hadn't given any thought to what leadership looked like, it was probably the first time, that I had to manage more than one or two people. and the output was much more considerate and strategic about where was the organization going and what were they trying to get from it and why did this function exist and what was their medium term, long term view. When I started to see, the P& L and the balance sheet and the HR challenges of other leaders. And, there was discussion about how the organization was structured and what their operating model was and all those sorts of things that I'd worked in those environments. Where that stuff was, part of the landscape, but I didn't have visibility on it. and so I did that and then, fast forward four or five years, and I ended up owning a half share in a company that we grew from seven staff to 70 staff over the course of about three or four years. And. was very technical roles that people were filling, but I was, I found myself in a leadership position and I think I've probably shared with you in the past and I'm actually reasonably comfortable as a leader. What I'm not comfortable as is a manager. the activity of, you know, a friend of mine says that managing is a verb. and it's something you have to do. leadership, I think is a little less like that. It can be more about who you are or who you turn up as. you know, what I have found that of the challenge with being a manager, and I'm not necessarily talking about, you know, micromanagement, but part of the challenge of being a manager is if you take on that day to day activity management process, people management process, People step back and insist that you do that for them again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. Whereas, you know, leadership, I do think, you know, when I look back at periods of time where I've worked with groups of people or companies that have been remarkably successful, it tends to be well led. whether that's by me or somebody else, but You're encouraging people and coaching them and setting them forth on a journey. We've agreed on what the journey is and if they need any help getting there, let me know. But if not, I'll catch you in a little while. And whether that little while is Friday or a month from Friday or next quarter, leadership sort of affords them the opportunity to step up and make some of their decisions. Whereas management tends to be do these things and then those things and the scope of you to make decisions is only limited to this and anything outside of that, you'll have to come back to me. it's, been an interesting journey, you know, my day to day activities at the moment is, is sort of 14 people to lead, but they're very diverse and they work, you know, they have stakeholders in different areas and, leadership's always a challenge and you always have to have a think about it. But the other thing is, It's so personality driven in that, you know, if I've got an accountant or a software developer or somebody who's working for me, who's going to execute a task, inspiring them to execute task is one thing, or managing them to execute the task is one thing. But From a leadership perspective, you really kind of have to consider who's this person, you know, what motivates them? Why are they wired like that? And for some people in leadership roles, that can be really, really challenging. They're just,"I don't really want to have to care about that. I just want outcomes." And you're like, well, you'll get astonishingly easier outcomes if you do understand that stuff.
Kate Peardon:8:22
Absolutely. Your leadership style is very much like the visionary leader. And I'm not sure if we have talked about this particular, like the Goleman's leadership styles. There is a leadership survey quiz on my website, where you can spend five minutes and find out a little bit about your particular leadership style. There's so many different leadership. surveys and profiles, and all of them are good as long as it tells you something that's useful. so this is just one of the many ones, but this particular visionary style Brett's facial response is not sure I've heard of that one, which I'll explain a little bit about because Brett and I've done a lot of leadership profiling over the years, but we haven't done this one. The visionary style of leadership is the one that it says, Hey, we're going here. It points to the future. It says, come with me. let's go. And they often take really big steps because they can see the big picture and they're off. and sometimes the challenge is like helping people come along with them. Talking about the difference between management and leadership. I totally understand that. because for you, leadership is setting the vision and setting the, big picture of where we're going and Hey, if you need some help getting the steps there, I'll help you do that. But if you can figure that out, that's great.
Brett Wiskar:9:29
Yeah. And I look back at kind of, you know, what you said then about that style resonates with me. I look back on probably what I think is the most productive, successful individual window that I've worked in. and the way that worked was I functioned as a leader, but I had managers. And so I was leading a large group of people, but within that group of people, there were managers. And so long as I was able to communicate the vision about where we were going as a group, there were managers who were leading discrete teams, but they were saying, right, well, you've heard from Brett, and this is where we're going. And this is why we're going there. And, and the why we're going there is really, really important. And often. Not necessarily something that all leaders grasp, but, if you've got some people who are really wired up around management, them giving them a vision to, that you're leading towards and giving them, that vision, allowing them to manage the process towards it. And it's not just, HR style management, project management and resource management. you know, financial management and those sorts of things are part of that program. So, you know, we talk about, organizations that are bureaucratic quite frequently have a lot of management, not a lot of leadership. the public services is, vilified around the world probably because of that. Whereas, you know, if we talk about sort of, The sometimes lionized capitalist methodology tends to be more about leadership and less about, we tend to hero some of these successful ventures that are all about striving for incredible outcomes. And, a lot of those organizations are burning the people in their ranks on the way because, you know, they're not instigating that management aspect that helps people get on that journey. I don't, you know, I have been accused in the past and probably rightly so about taking two larger steps. And that's probably a lesson to sort of, you know, I do see the bigger picture. I do see where we're trying to get to in five years and what the technology is going to do and those kinds of things. And not everybody's wired up you know. to respond that way. And so, you know, being able to break that, down and give people an area that they feel comfortable in functioning, but also stretching them. You know, you probably know better than I do, but I think there's some sort of science around. If you give someone a task, that's about 4% outside of their current range of comfort, that's the optimum window for improving their performance and stretching them. If you give somebody something that's 200% above what they currently do, it breaks them. If I've got a vision that's five years from now and it's 1,000,000% on where we are, how do we back that off and go,"What's the next 30 days look like?" Because this person might only be able to handle 30 days of vision, whereas that person over there might be able to handle the next quarter or the next two years.
Kate Peardon:11:54
And I think this style of knowing your people and knowing what people can do and where that edge is for them is a key part of your particular leadership style. And you mentioned also about you have a preference of leadership and how you like to lead. And I think for people that are listening, when something is your preference, it doesn't mean you can't do the other. It doesn't mean that you're not able. It's just that this comes more easily to you. So for Brett, it comes more easily to set the bigger picture. He thinks quickly, he works quickly, he takes big steps. And I know for you working on, well, how can I make sure people are along with the journey? How can I I know I work best when I have managers enacting the strategy and I give the bigger picture. And I think this has really threaded in with one of your leadership lessons that you're talking about today, which is about communication and having the conversation and something that I've noticed with working with you, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable the conversation is, you've always been one that has stepped into it.
Brett Wiskar:12:47
Yeah, I mean, I think conversations delayed tend to be worse conversations. You know, there's that other analogy that good news is bad news delivered early. probably 15 years ago, I went to an Australian Institute of Management function in Brisbane and there was a speaker and leadership management lesson was about having a conversation and she pulled it apart quite extensively. But what it really came down to was unpleasant conversations are unpleasant, but if you don't have a conversation with somebody about something that's going wrong, every conversation from that moment onwards until it's resolved is going to be unpleasant. So, it's not about being hard arse or coming down on people like a ton of bricks, whenever they colour outside the lines, but. You know, how do you expect people to know which lines need to be adhered to and which ones don't if you just let them scribble all over the page? performance managed people, I've gone to HR and I've sat down, you know, in larger organisations and said, what's our methodology and how are we going to do this? And we've used it to actively correct people's, Performance around what the organisation's expectations was and those kinds of things. And that stuff's really challenging. But, you know, when I look back at that, I kind of look at the conversations preceding that that we didn't have is probably a failing on me. If I'd been saying, hey, That's unacceptable and we're missing these deadlines and we need better performance from you here, here, here. If I'd had a dozen little conversations with somebody in the three months prior to that, we probably wouldn't have had to have the big conversation. And so, you know, there are times because of interpersonal relationships where I haven't necessarily lent into that or, that person's new or that person I find intimidating or, or, you know, that person's got political clout in the organization never when I've delayed those conversations have I sat down at some point in the future and gone, thank God I waited, So yeah, I think, I think having that conversation and that transparency around that when people understand that you will have those conversations, but you're also not, personally attacking them or, you know, coming after them or, or have an axe to grind. And I'm really, really conscious about when I have got to have tough conversations with people. I am then not sickly sweet, but I am then very conscious about making sure that, that, we've covered it. We've discussed it. It's done. My expectations of you aren't any less than they were. it's not a vendetta. It's about it's about making sure that we're all going in the right direction. And a lot of that is around alignment in that, you know, if I've got, I don't know, five or six people in my team and 80 percent of them are rowing the boat in a particular direction and someone else is not pulling on their all or, not, participating actively. you know, part of the leadership is not just how do you lead that person, but how do you lead the other people? How do they see what you're doing about this element that isn't necessarily getting you the outcomes that you need? because if you can create alignment in that group of people, you can then step back and go and do something else. You can say, well, I'm going to go and start this new initiative that we're going to be looking at in three to six months time, when you guys have finished doing what we're doing here. But now that we've got alignment happening in this group, you guys are going to self correct and self support and self manage your way to achieve that outcome.
Kate Peardon:15:44
And I know that is one that's your second leadership lesson is about alignment and how do you get alignment within your team? You mentioned about, so your first leadership lesson about communication and having the conversation. so your first leadership lesson about having the conversation and communication, the added bonus to that is that your team has. psychological safety, that they know, even if it's uncomfortable, that you'll actually talk to them about it and you won't avoid it. So that's one bonus of having the awkward conversations. and then the other bonus for your second leadership lesson about alignment is exactly, as you said, if you are not prepared, Keeping people in alignment and sharing, okay, we're going in different directions. We need to be going here. And if you're not having the conversation that everyone on your team knows you have to have, and if you're listening to this and you think about your team and you think there is someone I need to have a conversation with, everybody else in the team absolutely knows that. They're waiting for you.
Brett Wiskar:16:39
I don't know whether it'll make the final cut, but I have a story about that. So I, owned this software company. There was, we were growing, you know, at one point we were hiring a person a week for sort of six months. And the organization, probably saw headcount wise, a hundred percent growth year on year for sort of two or three years. and you know, we had a project manager and he came to us and said, we're looking for another project manager. I know a guy. So we hired the guy. The guy came in and he'd done various different things in his career. We hired him and put him in the business and he was, charged with running these clients and these projects and working with graphic designers and software developers and agencies that he worked with. it was a large organization. I was often in charge of sales. My business partner had a lot of, responsibilities in terms of our technical infrastructure and a couple of key accounts that he was managing. And we had, for want of a better description, we had day jobs. So we plonked this guy in and gave him clients and let the other project managers coach him to an outcome. our admin manager came to us at some point and said, that guy, his probation is coming to an end next Wednesday. And we went, oh, that, you know, that three months whizzed by really quickly. yeah, well, what do we think about him? And, you know, we had a conversation. Well, I don't know. I haven't been wowed and I haven't been super impressed that he didn't, didn't do that thing and he didn't do this thing. And we, when we sort of compared notes, we realized that both of us had kind of had some not great experiences with him. And so we called him one or two other people from the business and they went, Oh yeah, I'm not convinced about him. Anyway, after sort of some discussion, we decided that we wouldn't extend his probation. We would just end it, that he wasn't a good fit for the organization. So we had that conversation. He departed. That was unfortunate. The guy went on and got another job and it was all well. What was really interesting is in the seven or eight days after that, I probably had 12 or 14 people from the organization come to me and go, Thank God you got rid of him. He was awful. He was useless at this and this and this and this. And he did this other thing and he upset this person and he pissed off his client. And I was like, where was that information? And And so sometimes you can't see that sort of stuff. what I realized out of that is, is that you can't see everything. And what you actually needed in that group was a culture where there was not only alignment from him about what we were trying to achieve, but we needed the values in that group of people to kind of go, if he's not aligned. that has a negative impact on you and the work you're doing and you need to be vocal about that and that you need to, you know, you can't kind of go, well, well, he's my project manager and I'm a lowly software developer, so I'm just going to live with it being disastrous. You have to go, no, it's, It's my job to make things better. It's my job to get outcomes for the organization. It's my job to get outcomes from the clients. And so, this guy wasn't aligned, but what became clear was that my team didn't feel empowered to do anything about that. And that was a failing on our behalf. and you know, I probably learned from that a lot about sort of, you know, how do you onboard new people and how do you create alignment about them, but also how do you give everybody in the group authority to, to be an active participant in what leadership looks like and what the outcomes were looking like are getting. and, and I found it interesting that they felt comfortable enough to tell me about the poor things that were happening after I'd done something about it, but not before. there's some lessons in that.
Kate Peardon:19:38
And interesting. That becomes part of your culture because then they remember that and they remember how it was dealt with, and that becomes part of the stories that come from there.
Brett Wiskar:19:46
another anecdote doesn't have to make the cut, but in that same organization, we had a guy who had obviously worked in some pretty unsavory environments is very good at his job. and his default way of showing up was almost combative with. particularly with authority and management. And at some point he did something which was pretty, pretty ordinary. And, you know, my business partner at the time wanted to strangle him. And I went, well, why don't we have a conversation with him? So I planned how I'd have the conversation. I brought him in and we had, the way I would describe it is it was a compassionate conversation, but it was also, We gave him an opportunity to be who he was and share why he was that way, but also highlight that how he had dealt with some things wasn't acceptable for a bunch of different reasons. really challenging and my heart rates through the roof and I'm not a big guy on confrontation and you know, I sweated bullets about it for sort of 16 hours overnight while we wait until we had the conversation with him the next morning and, and stuff. Anyway, we had the conversation. and I think because of how we planned to have that very tough conversation, he responded really well. And I, and again, because he was quite a competitive kind of guy, I was really, I was quite concerned about how that was going to unfold. So we had that conversation, he left. Now that was. 12 years ago. I got a message from him two weeks ago. Uh, he lives in Canada. He's moving back to Australia. He can't wait to catch up with me.
Kate Peardon:21:02
Why do you think that is?
Brett Wiskar:21:04
I think if you handle people well and you listen to how they are and who they are and value them for who they are, you know, it is a bit of that. People won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how they made you feel. everybody wants to be treated like a person. Everybody wants to be treated compassionately. you know, someone I know says everybody wants to come to work with a sense of purpose and go home with a sense of achievement. I think that's probably universal. but you can do that in a bunch of different ways. And there are probably good ways to do it and good levels of engagement that make people feel valued and seen. you know, there are managers who come in and go, this is where we go. I'm going to do this and this and this. I need you to do these things. Thanks very much. I'm out of here. do you know these people? And, you know, you don't have to know their dog's name. Ideally you would, but, you know, there's a finite amount when you're managing a group of people to how much you can actually know. But you can also know just what someone's like. how fearful are they? Do they operate in psychological safety? What are their triggers? learning that kind of stuff about people can, make them feel valued and make them feel comfortable and they'll do better work in those circumstances as well.
Kate Peardon:22:06
And there's some really great stats around how people don't have to agree with what you are doing or saying as a leader, but as long as they feel that it's fair, like you're treating them fairly, or you've gone through a fair process, it doesn't actually matter that they don't agree. If they feel there's a fairness, then they're generally on board or supportive. And I wonder if in this instance, that was the case. They might not have agreed with what happened or they might not have liked it. Might've found it very uncomfortable. But If they found that you treated them fairly, that's actually the feeling that stays.
Brett Wiskar:22:36
And I think that kind of aligns, you know, it was communication. We had the conversation, we created some real alignment. and, and I think you're probably right. I think he probably walked out of that room going. I was a bit of a dilly yesterday. They've addressed it, but they did it fairly. They didn't rant and rave. They didn't kick me out. They didn't fire me. it was a process that how he behaved justified some sort of intervention. So we had the intervention, but we were considered about how we went about it. we didn't vilify him. And following that, it was really important for us, you know, When we went to the pub on a Friday afternoon and bought beers for everybody that he was included in that and he was welcome and, and that there wasn't, a legacy, to be prosecuted against him from an ongoing perspective.
Kate Peardon:23:15
Now Brett, well as a leader and as well as a day job, you are often seen speaking and doing keynotes on all things about future and innovation. Now your third leadership lesson is all about adaptability and about constant change, which I think aligns perfectly with these topics that you speak with all about innovation and change and change is the only constant. Why is it that adaptability has been such an important leadership lesson for you?
Brett Wiskar:23:42
the way I think about that, Kate, is, you know, humans on this planet are at the top of the food chain simply because of our capacity to be adaptable. we have, you know, different brains and different structures and different capacity to cope in all sorts of different environments. And that's how we got where we you know, I spent a lot of time looking at technology and it's very obvious that technology changes things all the time, but If we look back, 20 or 30 years to when, you know, some of your listeners will have started their career, things were wildly different. iPhones didn't exist pre 2007. and for some of us, 2007 seems like yesterday, but, you know, 15 year old who was born in 2009 and, you know, he's six foot one. is out there. That's not going away. There's a lot of narrative about technology, driven change and disruption and all that kind of stuff. But the key to all of that is our capacity to adapt. and so we've seen organizations who don't adapt and the organizations cease to exist. But within our organizations, all of us I think have worked with people who really struggle to adapt. and you know, I tell the story in some of my keynotes, you know, periodically, and I remember this from sort of, decades gone by where the automotive industry was disappearing in Australia. And, you know, Channel 7 News would turn up to the front of the gates and there'd be some, some 40, 50 year old guy standing there with a placard complaining about the fact that his job was being taken because the factory was shutting down. And they'd interview him and sort of say, what do you think? And he says, you know, I've worked here since I was 16 and my son's got an apprenticeship here and he also works here. And the unwritten aspect to that was this person said to the organization, if I commit to working for you 40 hours a week forever, will you commit to me having a job forever? And the organization was silent and the guy went, I'll take that silence as a yes. there's a lot of people who enter into their place of employment or the economy that they take their company into, where they sort of do this silent deal where they say, if I do these things, the world will look after me. history is littered with people that weren't looked after on that sort of basis. And so the key to being, relevant in the future as an organization or a team or a leader or a product is about Being flexible and adaptable to whatever the new environment is. So, you know, I'm doing a lot of stuff in AI at the moment. You know, three years ago, that wasn't a thing. But what we're learning is that that's a tool. It's a tool that will make some aspects of the things that some people do go away, but also free up time for them to do other things. And it's just a tool. You know, once upon a time, Telex was a thing and then fax machines were a thing. And, fax machine repair man is no longer a thing. but at some point it probably was. And, you know, You know, ultimately, something that we're relying on right here today is not going to exist at some point in the future. So people are able to adapt to that, and I think that that's really important. So if we look inside an organization, you know, if you've got a 200 person organization, a 20 person organization, or a 2, 500 person organization, something that we do today is going to change. And as people, we can look at that change and it might be, pushed on us by an industry or an economy or a piece of technology or a competitor. But if we look at that piece of change and go, I hate it, I'm not gonna, then, you know, that way ruin lies. and so, you know, sitting down with people and going, this thing's changing, we're going to have a new finance system or a new HR system, or we've got a new competitor, or this new piece of technology is coming in, we're going to have to figure out how to incorporate it into what we're doing. That has to be what we're doing. And there's a, in sort of the innovation circles, we talk about exploit or explore. and exploit is what are the assets of the business? What's the labour of the business? What's the market? What's the number of clients that they've got? What's their revenue? What's their balance sheet look like? Those are the things you put them all together and you exploit them and that's how you make profit. Explorers, what are the things that are coming down the pipeline? Or what are the things that we are not currently exploiting? And how are we going to introduce that? And businesses that only exploit, die. Because at some point, the economy they play in, or, you know, the MySpace is the world getting disrupted by the Facebooks. And Facebook didn't see Snapchat coming, but they bought Instagram. And, you know, all those sorts of things. You know, there was a period of time where Apple was dead in the water. and now they're not, because they explored, and they explored, and they explored, and they explored, and they explored. And, and then, you know, I do some, open market innovation consulting, and there's a number of organizations out there that when you talk to the board, or the CEO, or the GM about what their strategy is about exploring things, it's non existent. what's your budget around that? It's, it's non existent. so when I say adaptability is a key from a leadership perspective, you've got to know what you're adapting to. you need to build adaptive, muscles that make you more adaptable as a, as an organization and as a team, but you also have to be out there looking to find out what that thing is. Sometimes it's going to turn up out of the blue and you're going to have to work really hard to adapt, but if you can. Get a bit of a head start on what's coming and say, well, we're going to adopt this and we're going to change that and we're going to, you know, not do this anymore. that sort of adaptability, you know, what are we going to keep doing? What are we going to invest more heavily in? What are we going to stop? as organizations, I think that stuff's really important.
Kate Peardon:28:46
Have you got practical, tangible one percenter that people listening to this podcast are thinking, okay, I need to be more open to adapting or be more aware of it, or what's one thing that they could do to help with adaptability or being prepared for this constant change?
Brett Wiskar:29:05
from a personal perspective, I think, lifelong learning is a, is a key part of what all of us intend to work for more than the number three weeks in our lives really need to embrace. and there is an insane, you know, never before in the history of humanity has there been such an opportunity to learn yourself. There's, Khan Academy and LinkedIn Learning and Coursera and Google has courses and
Kate Peardon:29:26
a lot.
Brett Wiskar:29:27
sorts of things. or you can go to the free version of ChatGPT and ask it to teach you something and it'll teach you, if you're currently not. Improving your skills. That's on you. so that's from a personal perspective. I think that is a really central thing is that we have to be lifelong learners. We have to lean into this and it doesn't have to be, you know, embarking on a four year part time degree in something that you, you know, you feel the industry's move forward on. Very rarely these days are people hired based on the qualifications that they've got. people get hired based on what their potential is to achieve something for the organization. They need you to know stuff, not have a certificate that says you learned something. so I think the critical thing for individuals is about that learning.
Kate Peardon:30:07
That openness or ability to learn interest. I mean, the fact that they're listening to this podcast is a sign that you're open and interested in learning.
Brett Wiskar:30:14
Yeah, and, one of the big things around that is curiosity, something that I read a while ago is that, some people in the States did some study around conspiracy theorists and people who believe all sorts of, often sort of right wing kind of things. One thing they identified is that they're just fundamentally not curious in that if somebody stands in front of you and says, Black is white or, water doesn't make things wet. If you're not curious, you might just accept that at face value. So being curious is probably, a core part of how I've, I've lived my life. You know, it's what's coming next. What can we do? you know, how, how am I curious about. what skills I can acquire? What does that person know that I don't know? And how can I learn that? And you know, what does Kate think about leadership? and, you know, I think you're right, your podcast audience, by the fact that they're listening to this, are curious people. They're interested to know how they can improve. They're interested to take lessons from other people's experience instead of having to make those same mistakes themselves. From an organizational perspective, if I was to offer sort of that, that one thing is, all organizations should be looking at ways they can adopt things that are coming, but something that a lot of organizations don't do or don't do well is, find some sort of methodology for turning things off. It's often in organizations, someone's job to add something to what we do. I'm going to add this piece of software. I'm going to add this service offering. I'm going to add this, you know, I'm going to change how we do X, Y and Z. What is often not done is no one's running around going that thing there, we have four of those, so we're going to turn that one off. we're not going to offer that service anymore. We're not going to carry that product anymore. you know, we're going to rationalize our packaging. So instead of having five SKUs, we're going to have three. lots of organizations don't do that because people who are the boots on the ground in the organizations very rarely see it as their role to question something that's already being done. And so I think Giving people that, authority to have the autonomy to question, what is being done. I, a friend of mine used to work for telcos in developing nations all around the world. And he worked for a telco where, if somebody had filled that role, regardless of whether they were the COO down to the work experience kid, they actually had a process where they had physical badges. They would give you a badge and there was only, I don't know, a dozen badges in there. 10, 000 people. There was a dozen badges and if you used your badge for good in the course of the year, you got to keep it for another 12 months and the badge was where you could make a bust. So if you were a 60, 000 a year call center operator, but you saw the CFO doing something stupid that wasted money, you could pull out your badge and call a bust. and that idea of empowering everybody in the organization to look for. inefficiencies, stupid decisions, stupid processes, you know, that kind of thing. I think that's a really physical manifestation as a methodology for finding ways to stop doing bad things. But a lot of organizations look for ways to do better, but they don't look for ways to stop doing worse.
Kate Peardon:33:00
Yeah, I Iove that because it also gives scope to take on more things. And I even think of the really simple things to unsubscribing from things that are no longer needed in your inbox. Like some of the emails I think that was useful at a time that that's not useful anymore. Unsubscribe. So I've got space else. I love that badge idea as well as that 1%, like as a company, what's a 1 percent thing that you can do that helps in future with leadership. And you've picked a couple of your own personal 1% ers. your first one is, it's not the critic who counts. What does this mean for you?
Brett Wiskar:33:32
first discovered that. I like to think that I discovered it before it was popularized, but I first discovered that in the late 90s, probably
Kate Peardon:33:38
when goes into thing.
Brett Wiskar:33:40
I was like, this is kind of the problem with, things, probably once upon a time could have said it from heart, but, but effectively, You know, it's very easy for people to be, particularly those who are interested in keeping the status quo, it's very easy for people to go, oh, that guy tried this innovation or that guy tried to do something different and it didn't work. So we shouldn't, we should stop trying. But like, that's what BlackBerry and Kodak did, they stopped trying at some point. They went, what we're doing is enough. and they did this deal with reality that said everything will be fine so long as we keep doing what we're doing. probably 15 years ago, I was having, having a meeting with the CEO of a bank and insurance company in Australia, CEO of the division. And he was talking about their innovation program. And he said, what they discovered when they had an idea around innovation, they had to get two or three people on it and they took them out of the business and they sent them down the road to a co working space because if they kept it in the business, the anti bodies of the organization will kill the ideas and And I thought it was a really interesting turn of phrase because what he was basically saying is that there were critics internally that said, let's leave everything the same. Let's not do any change. And it was a big organization and 16, 000 staff, billions and billions and billions in revenue. And so there was a lot of people who were very interested, invested in keeping things the same. And that critic within them was the thing that was preventing their good ideas for the future seeing the light of day. And so that famous quote about not the critic accounts and the man in the arena. And it's about him getting up and trying again. if we do make mistakes, We learned heaps. We learned that was a bad idea or the way in which we approached that idea wasn't great. when you and I first started working together. I did a project for, a federal government body for sort of half a million dollars in R& D and we looked at a piece of technology and we, scoured the world for literature on it. We bought devices and we tried different things and all sorts of stuff. And ultimately what we learned was that the hardware of this disruptive technology wasn't ready yet. It was probably five to 10 years away before it was going to be robust enough with long enough battery life and enough resolution in the cameras and all sorts of bits and pieces. So I had to go to this, I had to go to this person who'd given us half a million dollars and say, Hey Sean, didn't work. And he was like, great. And I was like, sorry, great. He was like, oh, fantastic. How long will it be ready? And I went, oh, you know, five or 10 years. And he was like, what an outstanding lesson. I'm so glad we paid half a million dollars. What else do you learn? And he was deadly serious. he didn't expect that. I was going to revolutionize their 46 billion industry with a 500, 000 investment. What he wanted to know was how are we going to revolutionize it in 100 different ways across 20 years? And so he was placing half a million dollar bets left, right and center. And he was delighted that we didn't achieve an outcome. You know, he's the opposite of that. You know, he's not the critic. He's the guy who says you were in the arena and you were trying to change things. And that's outstanding. So what can we learn from that? he really inspired us to go and try something else. the next time we went back for a hundred grand and we tried something else and we did a bunch of different things. And, what we sort of developed this capacity to give him insights. So further out across the horizon than anybody else was looking for him. A lot of people were looking to get him an outcome in the next 12 to 24 months. We were saying, you know, what's five or 10 years look like? And the fact that he was not critical when we failed, or we felt that we'd failed, was, was a great endorsement.
Kate Peardon:36:53
it might be Brene Brown talks about, like the critic is the one in the stands versus you are the one that is in, it's not the field. It's not the stadium. You used the word before
Brett Wiskar:37:03
The arena.
Kate Peardon:37:03
the arena. Thank you. It's about being in the arena. There's a couple of books that I know are favorites of yours because we've talked about them over the years. James Clear's Atomic Habits, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. I know you and I have discussed that one. And one of my favorites, Essentialism, which is Greg McKeown.
Brett Wiskar:37:22
Yeah. Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Unfortunately, Daniel Kahneman passed away, I think it was March this year, and genuine loss to humanity in terms of the departure of his intellect. You know, for those, for your listeners who aren't aware, he won the Nobel Prize for Behavioral Economics. He worked really closely with a guy named Amos Tversky you know, they did really seminal thinking about how people think, how we all think, how we make mistakes and how our brain tricks us and how we tell ourselves one thing, but we do another thing. you know, that kind of stuff, thinking fast and slow is a tough read. it's a big, thick book and there's a lot of psychology in there, but genuinely changed my life. I, condiment is the godfather of the biases and heuristics and really sort of your capacity to critique. whether you're thinking well and whether you're making good decisions is, is outlined in that book. So I think it's, you know, genuinely life changing kind of stuff. Um, if you, I think it's a 20 hour audio book and for a lot of people, that's probably the best way to consume that. And maybe it's not 20 consecutive hours over the course of a couple of weeks, maybe it's a chapter at a time, but, but genuinely, a seminal piece of literature on psychology that, helps us all understand why we are. As flawed as we are, and kind of what shape those flaws take and how we might guard against them. So, you know, that's a, that's a really important thing. James Clear is, is everywhere at the moment, but. the value of that book really is, you know, I think often quoted that we don't rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our systems. I'm not a, not renowned for being phenomenally organized, but, but a little bit of organization can make a world of difference. So, you know, building your organization, uh, your organizational skills into, into systems so that you don't have to deploy, your cognitive efforts to make good practices and good decisions every day. and you know, something that he talks about in that book is, you know, what you want to do is sort of behave a certain way and it can become a habit. But if you work from the other direction, if you, have some sort of inherent identity about yourself, if that's stitched into who you are, the habit becomes thoughtless. You just do. you know, if you're somebody who takes the stairs instead of the elevator and you say that about yourself, you know, you never think about getting in the elevator. If you're somebody who doesn't take biscuits out of the tin in the kitchen all the time because you don't want to, be that guy, if you can stitch that into your identity, it becomes effortless to, sneak a cookie so, you know, that, that sort of stuff I think is fantastic. Um, and the essentialism, Greg McKeown's essentialism book is outstanding. His, his followup book is, less impressive, but essentialism, is really about picking what you're going to do and making sure you do it well. And, you know, a big push towards sort of outsourcing or automating bits and pieces. And it, and it's kind of. The higher level thinking around that. but you know, if you're gonna do two things simultaneously, you're gonna do them both poorly. pick and choose what you're gonna do. Do it. Well get it done. Do the next thing. And, and that might be on your to-do list for today, but it might also be on your things you wanna achieve in 2025. And, and so he has a lot of good thinking in that book about pursuing less things. but pursuing higher value things that really create the difference for you as a person or for the organization that you're in. And I think that as a concept is, is really strong.
Kate Peardon:40:31
If what you've heard from Brett today in regards to leadership or innovation has been particularly inspiring and you want to learn a little bit more around change, Brett does do keynote speaking and also comes into organizations and does innovation consulting, innovation program development, and conference speaking on what are the futures of work, what does adaptability and change look like, and how you can actually embed some of this in part of your company. So if that is something that you're curious about, you can find him at brettWiskar. com. And as he says, searching his name will do it because there's not a lot of Wiskars.
Brett Wiskar:41:06
This is true. Yeah. Um, that's, that's exactly right. So Yeah. I'd love to talk about this stuff. And, um, if you search for my son and you'll find me or my brother and based on what we do for a living, you won't think it's you won't confuse the two of us. So,
Kate Peardon:41:18
Well, now you've made it people curious to look you up to see what your brother does.
Brett Wiskar:41:23
He's a, he works in water management for the government. So
Kate Peardon:41:26
Oh, you've busted the myth now. Thank you very much, Brett, for joining today and sharing those three leadership lessons about communication. So having the conversation, um, about alignment and how that can achieve amazing things and adaptability is always the key. So please, those listeners today, thinking about what you've taken from Brett and our conversation, think about what would be 1 percent that you'd like to apply, uh, because a series of 1 percent is make us better as a leader. We don't have to go and change everything in one day. It might just be one small thing that you've taken from today. so much. Could be that about your structure and setting something up as a leader or taking the leadership quiz, or having a look at a little bit of these books that Brett has suggested or some of his work on future and innovation. So thanks very much, Brett. And
Brett Wiskar:42:11
Thank you.
Kate Peardon:42:11
you sharing your lessons today.
Brett Wiskar:42:13
Great to talk to you as always.
