Diversity and Sustainability as Growth Factors. Interview with Andrew Jones.

Andrew Jones

Hello, Sergey. Thank you so much for reaching out to us, and it's really good to be with you.

Andrew Jones

Yeah, the interesting thing about it was actually sparked by a UK government initiative, which was about helping organizations to grow in the post-COVID, although obviously we know “post-COVID”. But we were quite interested in it because they had been mentioned by the UK government, but our suspicion was that it wasn't really being acknowledged by business. And we wanted to find out whether businesses really did know how to grow or were actually aware that there was that potential to help them to grow. So that's why we wanted to get some insight. It was to just find out from organizations what their views were and to see if we could make some sense of that.

Andrew Jones

That's right. We conducted a survey. Actually, we had an independent company to actually conduct the survey for us so that we weren't in any way trying to steer people to particular conclusions. So we used an independent company to do that. There was a lot of data that was collected. What we did with the playbook, though, was to try to turn that into something that was going to be useful for people rather than just a whole set of metrics about the challenges and ideas. We wanted to turn it into something that perhaps somebody could use and maybe not answer every question that they've got, but at least to be able to support them in their thought process, their decision-making process.

Andrew Jones

I think what we've tried to put into practice since then, there's a couple of areas that we focused on, in particular. One is diversity and inclusion and the other is sustainability. And the reason for those is that they're quite well known terms and initiatives and they do have fairly high profile. So at the time, for example, with sustainability, COP26 was very much in the headlines. Whereas diversity and inclusion is an ongoing discussion and occasionally comes to the headlines and especially with things like gender pay gap, for example.

So what was good for us, in fact, was for us to think about what do those two things mean in terms of our own growth? So the first thing in terms of diversity and inclusion, we've challenged ourselves. And as a whole team, as a whole company, we've come together and then started really openly discussing what those issues are. And the reason that that's important for growth is that we recognize that the customers that we have both for training and for our consulting services and our coaching services are diverse in themselves. So first of all, it's important that we understand the diversity of our customer base.

The second thing, of course, is that it's just the right thing to recognize that we are different. We are individuals. We do have different outlook. And it's not always apparent what those differences are, for example. So, culturally, and as part of our organization, it's really important that we start to develop that internal dialog, that internal conversation within the organization because that will help us to respond better, more creatively to the people that we work with.

Similarly, with sustainability. What I think we recognized there was that when you talk to or perhaps analyze what large enterprises do when they start to talk about things like sustainability. There's a real danger that it becomes a PR exercise that it's being almost politically correct rather than what's the real, tangible thing that organizations and enterprises can do. But more importantly, what are the things that individuals can do. Because if you collectively do things, you know, individuals do things collectively, you can have a much bigger impact. So we're quite interested in that in terms of the changes, behaviors.

What it has done for us in fact is that we've collected metrics in terms of the positive impact the virtual training has had on the environment, for example. So in that context of training, clearly for lots of organizations, they had to inspect and adapt how they were delivering those training services, when we went into lockdown. But we've been doing it for many years before that. We've been providing training services for large global software enterprises for probably seven or eight years before we went into that. So what we were able to do was collect a lot of metrics. By doing it in this way, we can have a positive impact on the environment. But also what we've been able to do is to start to think about the positive impact that it has on people, on individuals and starting to think about accessibility to training and coaching services, for example. So it challenges us too, and it also allows us to take the challenge back to our clients.

So, those two initiatives are things that seemingly already part of the agenda. But in reality, what we want to do is to make them meaningful to us as a business and therefore to the community and to our clients.

Andrew Jones

I think, for both sustainability and diversity and inclusion, the change that we've had to put in place over the last two years, already quite significant for both of those. And before we were forced to do that in terms of the mainstream activities, before people were forced to work in that virtual environment, we had a lot of resistance from some of the training bodies, for example. We had lots of resistance because they felt that they could no longer control the model for delivery of training across the world. And they really wanted to protect different geographies, for example. So there was a lot of resistance there, and we felt for quite a few years before that, we had a number of, not so much conflicts, but some fairly robust conversations with people where we had to say: “But look for this particular client, we've saved tons of CO2. We've saved hundreds of thousands of miles because of providing virtual training.” So you translate that into all of those organizations that used to have people traveling many miles to go to training, then the potential impact globally is enormous. And I don't think that we have seen that.

Clearly, there's still some resistance to that becoming mainstream. But many of our customers now are saying: "Well, we've now made the business decision that we're going to close that head office in London and we're going to have some satellite offices around the U.K.", for example. “And people can come to those when they need to. But our general working practices will be remote.” So then you say: “OK, what's the impact from a diversity inclusion perspective?"

Well, we still need to be a little bit careful because we can't assume that everybody has the same access to the same resources. So, for me, you know, I'm privileged in having a nice place to live with the resources. I can be isolated and I can get on with work. But for some people, you have to be sensitive to the fact they might not have those resources. Or for other people, they may just be in a situation where actually going to work is their salvation.Let's say, if someone was in an abusive relationship, getting away from that environment. So you still have to put people right at the center and not treat everybody as if they are just the same. However you look at it, look at it from a positive perspective.

The great thing about virtual training is that you can make it more accessible to people, perhaps, people who have disabilities that prevent them from traveling that was the traditional way of delivering services. But immediately you can provide training to people and career development people through that virtual world. And it starts to level things up a little bit and starts to bring some equity into delivery. But at the same time, you still just have to challenge yourself just to make sure that the features that you use to deliver training are not just very sort of narrow thinking and assume everybody has the same ability to absorb training through that particular medium. So that's what I find interesting is thinking about it from a people perspective, because if you can do that, then I think that's where you start to lead to growth your organization because you do the right thing for people.

Andrew Jones

I think, the thing about geography, you mentioned U.S., but also, as I mentioned earlier, that we've been providing training to some clients across many time zones from West Coast, US, all the way across Europe and to Asia Pacific. And one of the things that most recently is, yes, you mentioned being able to set up a U.S. in collaboration with US colleagues, but also it's giving us the opportunity to get trainers aligned in the Asia-Pacific region. Which is great for us because we were delivering those training services out of the UK and clearly in that time zone, which makes that quite difficult for people having to work effectively through the night actually in the UK. So I think for us, that's quite exciting because it does genuinely turn us into a global organization. It's not that we weren't before, but it just makes it so much more tangible now.

Andrew Jones

Yeah, absolutely. The thing that we’ve always tried to do is to build our team, build our internal team so that we have a common way, an aligned way of delivering excellent services to our clients. And the way that we've always felt we could do that is by building up our permanent team. So we're still committed to that.

But if you go back to one of the things you just said about being a morning person, for example. Not everybody's morning. Some people really don't wake up until lunchtime, but putting it into the context of different people having, let's say, childcare issues, you know, some people maybe have chunks of time ahead of the day, but quite happily to start to work early or work into the evening. From a diversity perspective, that's fantastic. We can start to accommodate those sorts of things. We might not necessarily see too many people work through the night, but I was just looking at some feedback for one of our Asia-Pacific courses that was run recently, looking at the feedback from our client's own internal survey, feedback was excellent. It was “Strongly agree” to pretty much everything in terms of the quality of delivery. So I know that we do it well by just committing to those client outcomes.

Andrew Jones

Well, I think that's a really good point. Once you start working outside of your home territory, even subtleties for working across European countries, for example, the subtleties could be quite different. But when you go further than that you do have to just be very sensitive to the cultural differences, the expectations of people. So even things like the resistance or probably being inhibited from having cameras on in virtual events in some countries, it's just not the cultural thing to do. So, I think it takes a lot really for individuals to be able to work across multiple time zones. And then if you imagine, let's say you are working in Asia Pacific time zone, just the diversity across that — people from Australia, India, Philippines — immediately there's a lot of diversity there. So you treat individuals with respect.

Andrew Jones

I think the way that we've done it is you think about incremental growth. And I think it's true for whatever sort of company or service you provide, think about incremental growth. And by that, I mean once you're established and you've got those core services, really cherish the things that clients value. Really cherish those things and then incrementally try to extend them out in different directions. So by that, I mean, rather than saying “We've delivered”, let's say, “this set of training courses in the UK. now let's immediately go to Asia Pacific and then let's deliver.” Well, that's not an incremental change. But how might you get that? You know, the way we did that was working with a global client. Starting in Europe, originally traveling between a number of European cities, then taking that to virtual environment, then extending that to East Coast U.S., then extending that across time zones in the U.S, and then extending that to Asia-Pacific, so that is the incremental approach, protecting all the time, protecting the value that you're delivering, whether it's a particular training set or whether it's a particular clients or a particular territory, never forget really the value that you've got at the core of the business. If it's about the product and service, let's say for example, what we originally had, we developed a set of training courses that were largely originally for the BBC. So we developed those. Those were done very well, they were our own internal courses. And as we spoke to that particular client, we developed further ones that were based on that core. And then we started to introduce certified training, that was another angle. And then over time, you build this incremental approach, always inspecting and adapting the services or the products that you deliver.

Andrew Jones

Well, thank you very much. Yeah, it's been nice to talk to you. I feel like we could be talking all day, so thanks for concluding it. Thank you, Sergey.