Ben Pearce (00:02.894)
Hi everyone and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Well, it's got to be one of the reasons we love tech. It is constantly changing. There's always something new and always something exciting. There's constant innovation. So every team in tech needs to always be adapting, always be innovating. And today we're talking about innovation and how you create a culture of innovation.
the whole team or organisation where innovation thrives. Now, I guess today is tech nerd turned entrepreneur and founder of Wubble You. So representing the North East of England, please welcome to the show, Mark Reddy. Mark, it is lovely to have you with us.
Mark Renney (00:47.234)
Ben, thanks for having me. This is class. I'm really excited to talk about this today and innovation in tech.
Ben Pearce (00:52.77)
Brilliant, well it is brilliant to have you with us and straight away we've got quite an international audience so I always like to do a quick accent check. We've had people from the Black Country, you are representing the far north east of England, correct me if I'm wrong.
Mark Renney (01:01.326)
You
Mark Renney (01:07.372)
I am, yeah. I'll try and really accentuate that Geordie accent, but I might slip back into something else. We'll see what happens.
Ben Pearce (01:11.43)
Hahaha
So some people might need Google Translate on just to help out in case it gets too broad.
Mark Renney (01:20.012)
Yeah, well I might get called out by some real Geordie's, I'm not sure which.
Ben Pearce (01:24.032)
Yeah. Well, thank you for coming and joining us on the show to talk about, think, what's a really exciting topic, which is how you build this kind of culture of innovation. For people that haven't met you before, would you mind introducing yourself to us?
Mark Renney (01:35.351)
Yeah.
Mark Renney (01:40.61)
course. So, yeah, my name is Mark Rennie and I run a software development company called Wubblu. And what we're really good at then is, building tech products that, you know, create results for scaling businesses. know, scaling businesses, you know, typically needs, you know, three, three things really in internal automation to help them be more efficient. They need business intelligence to help them make better decisions. And some businesses, you know, have like really great
idea is really great IP in their business already. you know, by productizing that and building that into a tech product, you know, they can, they can sell that worldwide to, you know, an audience across the world just by licensing IP that they already have. So, you know, those are three things that we're really good at. And, you know, we, that's what we work with our clients around. And, you know, why I think this is going to be really interesting conversation is that, you know, a lot of those clients aren't
aren't technical innovators already, but they become technical innovators just through the process we have. And, you know, I want to talk through sort of that journey and rules that we've sort of pulled together around, you know, the things which help them and the things which hurt them.
Ben Pearce (02:49.09)
So it's a repeatable process. It's not like an organisation is born innovative and then remain innovative. You're saying it's a repeatable set of processes and things and habits that you can go through that actually make you more innovative as a team or as an organisation.
Mark Renney (03:04.62)
Yeah, you know, it's starting from leadership, culture, mindset, and then actually just the actions you take in the business. You know, I think it's at several levels. I think, you know, there needs to be sort of changes and adjustments in ways of thinking to be innovative. And I think any business can be innovative, innovative.
Ben Pearce (03:23.616)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. so, let's just maybe, so we're gonna dig into the hat. We're gonna dig into these kind of things and that's always the good meaty part, the good conversation. But if we just back up a little bit first, why? Why do you need to be this innovative business?
Mark Renney (03:43.214)
Sure, this is an important question, but if we think about progress, people tend to think that standing still is a straight line. If they don't progress, basically they stay the same. But what tends to happen is if you're not progressing, you're naturally falling behind because the average
ability of every other business around you is improving. So, standing still actually is a gradual decline. Yeah, exactly. I know some great people who run businesses and they're still operating like they were 20 years ago. They're still using paper, they're still using Excel. You see this a lot in professional services, say like accountancy firms who haven't adopted, say, digital tools around accountancy.
Ben Pearce (04:18.164)
Entropy. Yeah, it's declined. Yeah.
Mark Renney (04:42.284)
You know, people setting up businesses now will be evaluating their options and looking at those businesses and thinking, do I really want to be sending my receipts in by the post? know, like especially gen Z's and millennials, right? They're digital first generations. And I think, you know, innovation is important because of that. You know, if you're not moving forward, if you're not at least keeping pace, then you're actually just falling behind. And it's, it's not a
It's not like a short, sharp failure with the business either. It's like a gradual decline to the point where actually, you know, things are just too hard to operate. And that's what we want to help businesses avoid. You know, we want our clients to actually move faster than everyone else in their industry.
Ben Pearce (05:25.688)
Yeah. And it's that inertia, isn't it? you've become part of an organization where this is how things are done, right? So this is the way it's done and you do it and then you're super busy and now you're under stress and then somebody says, and now we can just change how we do that for little perceived benefit for those.
Mark Renney (05:41.41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (05:54.426)
that's really hard to do to kind of take an organisation and it's interesting you know so I've been running my own business now for two years and there's processes and things that I set up maybe two years ago that I kind of think well I could probably improve this now but do I want to make the effort to do that and
I just get the thing done that I need to do and then and there's almost like a little bit of a wait because you know you can feel that culture of innovation almost disappearing unless you feed it unless you continue it continues to do it so so I guess it's something like this it's trying to get your organization into a mindset where it knows it needs to innovate it embraces that innovation and wants to as opposed to be thinking I'm so busy and stressed this is just another thing I've got to do
Mark Renney (06:25.026)
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Renney (06:39.862)
It's, you know, I think that's a really important point, Ben, because like a common thing people will say, right, is I'm too busy. I'm too busy to change that. I'm too busy to show someone else, someone else that would do that. Right. So, you know, a common situation we encounter, right. Is, you know, someone will reach out and, know, let's say, you know, it's an office director of a company, which is turning over seven or eight figures a year. Right. You know, they start that business because.
You know, they, wanted freedom, right? But actually what they've ended up doing is constructing this prison around themselves because they're working 80 hours a week. You know, they've got 50 to a hundred people in that team, but like they're still running the day to day operations. And in their mind, they're too busy to show anyone else how to do it. It's too hard. Like the fundamental things underneath them to, for them to be able to hand those things off don't exist. You know, so it's not a simple thing for them in their mind of just, well I need to.
give this, you know, give parts of this world to other people in their mind. It's like, wow, to do that, I have to probably invest hundreds of hours of time that I simply don't have to do that. And that's accumulation of all of the lack of innovation, probably over the last decade of time, you know, so just kind of like, it's like a blocked pipe, you know, it all kind of builds up to the point where it's like that person, they can't, you know, they can't keep doing what they're doing or
Ben Pearce (07:43.576)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (07:49.464)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (07:58.894)
do what they're doing or their strategy is to sell the business but the reality is they're probably just going to die in their deaths.
Mark Renney (08:00.3)
You know, their exit strategy is to sell the business, but that reality is they're probably just going to die at their desk, you know, because, and, you know, it's, guess that's a direct way of putting it, but like, that's, that's a situation. I think a lot of business owners put themselves in almost by accident and no one wants that. Right.
Ben Pearce (08:16.206)
Okay, yeah, yeah. So we're thinking about how do we get a team, a business to really be thinking, right, okay, we're gonna constantly always be changing, we're always gonna constantly be innovating, which means we'll get the benefits of being fit for the next generation of workers, the products will be digitised, and hopefully, they're gonna be the most efficient versions of those products, of those processes, so that their productivity of their organisation is gonna go up.
Mark Renney (08:28.322)
Yes. Yeah.
Mark Renney (08:45.132)
Yeah. And, you know, we have five, you know, rules around this of, of like five things that businesses can do to, to sense check this and, and, know, fundamentally make small steps around this as well. You know, like this should be, you know, these should be, this shouldn't be like a, like a massive change in one go. There should be like lots of small, like evolution rather than revolution, you know, as I've hit it before.
Ben Pearce (09:07.308)
Yeah. Well, you teased me there, Mark, because you told me that you've got five rules. Should we go through them? Let's share. Let's get rid of them at the top. Let's tell everybody, what are your five rules? And then should we dig into each one? So five rules for creating a culture of growth and innovation.
Mark Renney (09:11.15)
Hehehehe
Mark Renney (09:27.598)
Yeah, sure. So if I just run through the five of them now, and then we can talk through each one of that. So number one, I think it's really important to have big vision, but small steps. Number two, where we implement this, we've got to be thinking about what's our theme? Like what's the one thing that unites everyone in the business? How do we put a roadmap around that? And how do we set objectives, like tangible objectives that people are accountable around? Third,
Businesses tend to be really forgetful and we need to build a business brain. four, psychological safety and mindset in the business is paramount. Innovation will fail without that. And five, a really pragmatic step. We've got to find the strategist in the business and pair them with someone who can execute. And those five things, think fundamentally give us a really strong recipe for
and culture for innovation.
Ben Pearce (10:29.038)
Okay, like it, right. Well, should we unpack? Let's go through those, shall we? Should we unpack those? So let's start number one. I think he said big vision, small steps, if I'm right.
Mark Renney (10:34.839)
Yeah.
Mark Renney (10:41.1)
Yeah. Yeah. So where this comes from, Ben, right? When, when we speak with businesses, right? You know, what they tend to have is, you know, like lofty girls, right? We're talking about skill and businesses who are, who want to disrupt in their industry. And they are, they are typically doing that, right? You know, typically they just haven't got the tech bit figured out yet. And what can happen is if you have, you know, a big vision and big steps is you end up in a situation where
Progress really isn't made because like each individual step is just too hard. So what we've really got to do is set like that big vision. So we've got something really big to work towards, but then understand, okay, what are the smallest steps we can take right now? Even if that tiny minute to move towards that. And that's important because we've got to start to build habits within the business and see results. If we have...
In the business of drive for innovation and then no progress. I think you start to build a culture of fatigue, you know, they're talking about that again, but actually it's, we're just talking about the same things we talked about last month, you know, and I think that fatigues people in the team where we want the opposite, right? We want, we want people to see results and understand that, well, actually, you know, we said we would do those things. did them and we know that the things that we talk about next are going to be achieved as well, you know, and I think.
Ben Pearce (11:54.306)
Yeah.
Mark Renney (12:12.022)
know, an example around this, right, is
A surprising number of businesses which are maybe turning over seven figures, don't use like a CRM for sales, like a customer relationship management system, right? They get leads through via phone or via email and they just manage that whole process via the email inbox or notes that they write down, right? And I think that can work when you're of like six and seven figures, if you've got like
got people who can always sort be there and deal with those things quickly. But what tends to happen is
You these, you know, leads come in, you're not tracking them properly, you're not following up properly. And then you're leaving like, you know, probably a six figure amount a year on the table in things that you just not responding to or following up on, you know, and it starts to become like a significant percentage of things that, know, just, um, know, deals, which, which maybe are winnable, but, aren't And I think why businesses end up not putting CRMs in place is because they look at what they need to do to put a CRM in place and go, right.
If we do this, we need to change process like across the whole front of house of the business. need to integrate it with whatever we're doing for project management and delivery. And it looks like a monumental task and therefore it's never done, right? Or it's talked about a lot and then never done, which I think is worse. And I think, you know, that needs to be flipped on its head say, okay, well, how do we put a CRM in place that, know, initially one person uses and everyone else still does what they did before, but one person is now using it.
Mark Renney (13:52.578)
And then, okay, how do we look at, once we've done that, how do we look at the edge of that person's rule and what they connect to? And then it's another step, see who we can, see what process and who we can pull in and then start to make it like a step-by-step thing rather than, okay, what can I now, you know, from two months time, everyone's using a CRM. And like, that's what I mean by sort of big vision, small steps.
Ben Pearce (14:16.736)
Yeah, you know, I love it and it's this idea also awesome like small small value quickly So you take a small step and you get small value, but it's quick and people I've seen it with data platforms where people have like want to deploy this massive all singing all dancing data platform, but The problem that means is it is it's rubbish for everyone It's just generic because it's so huge and actually if you just fixed it for one person and gave them an amazing Experience and then took the next user and did that
Mark Renney (14:23.02)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Renney (14:39.019)
Yeah
Ben Pearce (14:46.75)
You build momentum, goodwill, value, all quickly as opposed to just this monolithic big vision and getting caught up in the big vision.
Mark Renney (14:55.726)
Exactly. it, you know, I think value quickly, as you mentioned that thing so important because you know, the more people it touches, the exponentially more complex it gets. And, know, it can mean that, well, actually it's ready for like 95 % of people, but because it's not ready for, you know, one rule, you then can't do, you can't, can't, you can't use any of it, you know, because you've kind of intrinsically tied it all together. And I think it sort of avoids those problems as well. You can just do things way more quickly.
without having to worry about like all of the different things that it touches. And you know, rubbish for everyone. You know, I think that's such an important phrase as well because I think that's easy to do when you do too much at once. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (15:37.718)
Yeah. Well, let's move on to the next one. So we've done big vision, small steps. What's the next rule?
Mark Renney (15:45.474)
So, if we think about we've got our vision, what we need to do then is bridge the gap between vision and small steps. And I think the best way to do that is to think about, okay, what's our theme? What's the thing in the business right now which creates the most opportunity or is the biggest problem? And then how do we create, just focus across the team which is doing the innovation, just on that one thing.
And then what we then do is build a roadmap around that. You know, over the next three to 12 months, like what are tangible outcome outcomes and markers of success that, you know, we want to measure around that. And how do we, how do we lay that out? You know, you know, in weeks or months, so we can, we can measure that things are moving in the right direction as well. How do we make sure that we're directionally correct, even if we don't stick to a perfect plan? And then how do we create tangible objectives off the back of that?
So that might be OKRs, for example, or just some way to measure smart, girls and give people accountability and responsibility for those things. think roadmaps and objectives, that's not unique thinking, right? But I think what I've found really works really well is thinking about a theme. And what I mean by a theme is that
Mark Renney (17:13.844)
know, when we talk about a vision, that tends to be sometimes it's not measurable, like what we want to achieve, right? Like, for example, some people might say, you know, like, it's not like it's like a financial target, right? It might just be something which is a bit less measurable. And I think sometimes you can move in a direction which isn't measurable, but it's clearly beneficial for the business. So for example, you know, you might have
You might have a theme which is quality first time, or, you know, we, like we have like customer success. Like what, what are those things mean? And it's not like you can measure those things, right? But it's, just like, what, what's the one thing that we want everyone in our business thinking about? So that when we're talking about roadmaps and objectives, it, you know, most contribute towards that thing. Cause that's the thing, which is the most painful thing in the business right now, or the thing which creates the best outcome. And I think that's why themes are important because you can, you know, you can create a theme.
Ben Pearce (18:07.628)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Renney (18:13.228)
which is not measurable, and then create roadmaps and objectives aligning with that theme which are measurable.
And yeah.
Ben Pearce (18:21.686)
Yeah, it's the old, I've just got the old adage, isn't it, of, you know, talking to a stonemason in ancient times, you know, what, you know, they're hammering like the 9000th brick or whatever that he's shaped that day.
Mark Renney (18:31.682)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (18:33.878)
And what is he doing? Is he hammering a stone or is he building a cathedral? And maybe the fact that he's building the cathedral, that's the vision. He doesn't maybe get the ornateness of it, the scale of it, the fact it's gonna take hundreds of years to build, all of that. But he knows, that is what I'm doing, I'm building a cathedral. But the reality of that is, that means I'm hammering 9,000 stones or whatever a day. But he's able to clearly, there's that golden thread back to the vision.
Mark Renney (19:01.772)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, because.
know when you everyone I guess everyone who's ever set a three or five year plan like knows that you know it's it's more of a am I directionally moving towards this thing rather than you know if I set that out now and I set weekly objectives towards a five-year plan you know you're never going to be able to do that because by week three like that plan is totally kaput you know because like things happen right so so I think you know you're right then it's like you know we're building the cathedral the stillmason's hammering on that one thing
Ben Pearce (19:25.41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Renney (19:34.254)
And let's just do things which kind of bridge the gap between it to make sure we've got the compass right without like, it's not like we're setting GPS coordinates for the whole route now. We just want to know that we're walking in the right direction.
Ben Pearce (19:43.874)
Yeah. Yeah. So we've got two so far. Big vision, small steps, theme roadmap objectives. What's the third rule?
Mark Renney (19:57.464)
So don't be forgetful and build a business brain.
Ben Pearce (20:01.27)
Okay, what does that mean? I don't know what that means.
Mark Renney (20:03.662)
So I think.
Mark Renney (20:11.758)
You know, I think a lot of businesses can struggle, think, with systemizing what it is that they do. you know, building, building tools, building documentation, you know, building, building the right assets within the business so that if that thing needs to be done again, it can be done very easily. And you see this a lot, right? So, especially in a small business, it's like, oh, like, you know, this person's leaving and we've got to document everything that they need to do.
everything that they've learned over the past 10 years, we need to document and we've got four weeks to do it. And it's like, okay, right. You're going to forget a lot there as a business, because someone's going to walk out the door with it. And that's what I mean.
Ben Pearce (20:47.182)
you
Yeah.
Mark Renney (20:57.672)
And on top of that, that person in that role has probably forgotten a lot of stuff if they're not writing it down because we forget 60 % of what we learned the day after we did it. the way we fix that is we have a really strong mechanism for capturing what we learn, capturing documentation, and then building that into repeatable processes. So how we do that as a business is we use Notion.
as an operations manual. So, you we have documentation on how to do, you know, the majority of our processes, anything from running payroll to, you know, doing things in the business to our sales process, you how we market. And, you know, that's, that's like our, our memory, right? You know, so we can go back to that and see how, how we can do it. And then what we do is we use software called ClickUp, which is project management software, but we use it as like our
Ben Pearce (21:28.11)
Okay.
Mark Renney (21:55.246)
I guess like an operating system for the business, right? So whatever, there's tasks that we need to do, are, know, tasks can be generally one of three things, right? It's something repeatable, like that has to happen on a regular basis, payroll, right? Like if don't, if your business doesn't pay their team, the team is probably not coming in next month. So like, that's something which has to happen every month and you know, you've got to do it, So, you know, it's a repeatable process that's.
can live in something like ClickUp and Re-occur every month. then you assign it to someone linked to the documentation. it's, wow, OK, we've, as a business, we've remembered how to do that process. And it's now really easy to do. And we can really easily assign it to other people. If someone leaves, if someone's on holiday. So we've got repeatable things. We've got ad hoc things, are things which just come in which have to be done. So for example,
You know, if one of your clients rings up and asks for something, you know, okay, that's an ad hoc task, right? You know, let's get that in something like ClickUp and Track that we've got to do it. And if there's a process that we can link it to, it's something that we've done for the clients, great, we can link it to that. And then someone would just follow that process. And then there's template tasks. know, so template tasks are typically things that don't happen on a regular basis, but they happen like when other certain events happen. So for example,
If you win a project and then you've got some like pre project checklist that you need to go through, great. Okay. We can turn that into a template, a task. We can link it to the right documentation. And then it just gets assigned to someone to get done. And those become real assets, right? Because it's like, when you're innovating and you learn something, it's like, great. Okay. Let's write the documentation for it. Let's get it as the right task type and click up. And then we can just do that thing going forward. We can assign it to the right person and then
you we're kind of good to go. But I think a lot of times the opposite happens. You you run a project and you you learn things. Everyone talks about, you know, yeah, we need to make sure we don't do that again. And then the exact same thing happens again, because, you know, it was, it never went through that process to make sure that, you know, something material changes to make sure it never happens again. If that makes sense.
Ben Pearce (24:09.902)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard though, isn't it? Because in my experience, the documentation is the last thing people want to do, the last thing people do and therefore, and the other bit is the maintenance of it. So people might get excited and go, oh, I've documented that, but then the app changes, you know, and now the screenshots that you've used or the things are wrong now.
Mark Renney (24:18.838)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Renney (24:26.306)
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Renney (24:32.622)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (24:37.006)
And then they're a little bit wrong, but you can still get through it, but then in a year's time they're a lot wrong and now it's not even in you know and And so that that's it always seems to be the challenge with that documentation No one wants to do it and if they do do it it goes out of date so quickly
Mark Renney (24:50.614)
Yeah, I think, I think documentation is, is way harder when you're on the cutting edge of something, you know, so building tech documentation is hard, right? Because, you know, you build like a complex engine for something like you said, and then, you know, like three or four weeks later, you know, like that's, that's improved quite a bit in the documentations out. Someone needs to go back and do that. Or, you know, if you're working agile, you know, the truth is it just never gets done. But I think.
In business operations, you know, there's a lot of things that you do, which don't really change after you started doing them. You know, like, like payroll just doesn't really change. You know, it just, you're just paying more money normally if you're growing. So it's like, for those things, I think it's perfect because like, you know, what, and I think that's where you should start, you know, what, look at like, what's really consuming time for them from the management director and the leadership team. And what can you build like small steps, right? Like what, what are the things you can build some really small things on like this?
and then start to delegate them out.
Ben Pearce (25:49.122)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. So we got three. So that was don't be forgetful. Build a business sort of brain. Fourth rule.
Mark Renney (25:54.968)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Renney (25:59.192)
Psychological safety is paramount. So psychological safety is in a nutshell, it's like people being accountable for their responsibilities and their roles, like no one's under blame or under fire when mistakes are made. And that's really important. And there is balance to this, right?
Ben Pearce (26:00.942)
Okay. Okay. What does that mean?
Mark Renney (26:28.088)
You know, crux of it is like people shouldn't really be punished for making mistakes because when it comes to innovation mistakes are inevitable. So therefore punishment is inevitable. And I think it can create a culture in a business where, you know, people are fearful to then innovate because they know that they're bound to make a mistake somewhere and they get punished for it. And it becomes, you know, I think businesses that have that struggle to innovate and, you know, this
This can happen sometimes when you've got like someone really bullish in the leadership team who's, you know, got really high standards and, they just don't accept anything other than perfect. You can't have perfection when you innovate. Cause you're learning how to do it basically. And I think, I think that is, I think that's, that's really important. I think it's hard to achieve because there's a, there's a real balance between, between that, you know, like between, between blame, but actually, you know,
Ben Pearce (27:10.722)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Renney (27:25.972)
making sure that people are held accountable if they are not achieving objectives, they're making the same mistakes over and over again, they're not following process. it's like, I think that's a, that is a really hard tight rope to walk, if that makes sense. But I think, you know, think clear, clear things that can be fixed in a business, you know, if, if, people are punished or admonished or whatever it is for making mistakes, you know, those things have to be kind of rooted out.
They're very beginning to make sure that people can experiment and innovate and make mistakes without coming under the cost for it.
Ben Pearce (28:04.898)
Yeah, and it's that sort of personal accountability and fail fast. think if you can couple those two together, so if you've hired people and have got people that take accountability and wanna do things well, and they wanna innovate, and when things go wrong, they're gonna then go, okay, this went wrong.
Mark Renney (28:10.166)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (28:24.948)
Now they're going to do some learning. This is why it went wrong. Now they're going to update the documentation or whatever it is. And they're going to report that up the chain and go, this is what went wrong. This is what went wrong. This is why it won't go wrong again. Next. And you've got that file for that is that is wonderful. But it's if you've got to that place where every failure now is a massive failure and people aren't encouraged to do that or people hide it, they don't take accountability to they take they make failures. But then they go, it wasn't my fault. It was
Mark Renney (28:26.604)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Renney (28:36.77)
Yeah, exactly.
Mark Renney (28:45.899)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (28:54.794)
their fault, I'm the victim here, nothing that I could possibly learn or do differently. You don't want a team full of that either, know, sort of failing with that mindset.
Mark Renney (28:57.208)
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Renney (29:03.694)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that I think you just hit the nail on the head to be honest, Ben, because, you know, when you start tipping to that territory as well, innovation is really hard, you know, because people will not want to, you know, people either won't, you know, or they'll all deflect or, know, they won't want to sort of push into this territory where innovation for me is like, you know, people understand, they're not they're not personally
you know, going to get blamed or punished for anything which goes on here. Like, you know, we, we, we succeed or fail as a team. You know, we, all pull our way when something's going wrong, we'll jump in to fix it. And, you we, learn from it. And I think, you know, this can become apparent sometimes, you know, when you've got an innovative company, which is working with a company, which is at the other end of the spectrum, I think you can see some really interesting things happen. Normally a real clash of culture.
I do think that's, I do think it's especially important for anyone who is thinking about building tech or bringing in a tech partner or tech people, you know, they need to evaluate this in their own business before they do this because, without understanding that, without understanding that, I think tech, tech does, think tech companies generally do focus more on psychological safety than, than other industries. And I think
If you're a business which hasn't thought about this before and you start to bring in tech companies to do things with you, you might see that difference in culture. there's probably things that both businesses can change better to work together, but I think some self-reflection there can always help as well.
Ben Pearce (30:42.764)
Yeah. Fifth rule, we're motoring through the time. Fifth rule.
Mark Renney (30:48.462)
So I think it's really important to pair a strategist with an executor. And this is where it starts to real, actionable. So.
I think what can happen sometimes, right, is you end up with a lot of talk around innovation. yeah, we need to do this. We're going to do this. We've got this big vision. then, you know, next week, next month, we're talking about the same things and then not really much is happening in between, you know? And I think, I think this can happen especially when you've got people in the leadership team who are largely like visionary.
Or they're too busy to do these things themselves. know, and I think, I think it's fair to say like a lot of leadership teams kind of fall into one of those two camps, right? You know, they've got the vision because they want to get there and then, know, they're still very good at action. It's just like, really busy doing other things, everyone in their business. And I think this is where it really pays off to find someone in the business who
Ben Pearce (31:53.208)
Yeah.
Mark Renney (32:03.202)
has the right mindset, you know, they're curious, they want to change things and
with some empowerment and know some nudge in the right direction and a vision and the freedom to do this like they will really excel they will grab a hold of things and they will they will start to influence and make this change and you know really good example i've got this right is i was speaking to someone about six months ago and runs a business uh 100 to 150 people and you know grew very quickly and you know that
that's sort of a visionary, right? know, big vision and you know, they, had someone in the business who was in the admin team. You know, just doing like admin things and you know, that person started, you know, coming to the, to the instinct, it could be, do this better. Could we do this better? And, know, they, they, did give them that space. They set them that, that sort of roadmap, you know, those, those sorts of themes and you know, that, that person has grown to director level just by simply just, just grabbing a hold of things and
and fixing them, know, basically taking that action to move things forward, lots of small steps. And I think that's what other businesses need to want to make this change. They need to find that person in the business and give them that freedom and responsibility, you know? And I think good things start to happen if you can find that person.
Ben Pearce (33:31.616)
Yeah, it's that kind of It's going it's going back from your you know, your themes roadmaps and objectives. You need your themes You need your roadmaps, but then you need so and so is going to do this thing by that date and A list of those and we're going to execute on those
Mark Renney (33:45.302)
Yes.
Ben Pearce (33:49.354)
And somebody's gonna chase those up and all of those things need to happen and they maybe need to happen next week and the week after and it becomes a routine and there's a bit of grit and a bit of a grind and all of that kind of stuff. You can't just have the vision it's where the rubber hits the road, isn't it? Yeah, and if I think about myself, I know
Mark Renney (33:59.768)
Yeah.
Mark Renney (34:03.616)
Exactly. Exactly.
Ben Pearce (34:07.726)
I need support with that on the execution because I just start to get a bit bored if I'm honest. Do you know what mean? I've got the theme, I've thought it through, I've done the exciting thinking, I've proved it can happen once or twice and then that iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, here's my task list of things that I need to, I just find that deathly boring.
Mark Renney (34:10.862)
Mm.
Mark Renney (34:18.796)
Yay.
Mark Renney (34:26.414)
Yeah, I know, but like, I'm the same, know, I kind of, I really like to start things. I like to build things, right? So probably more like you, where you like to get some, do that really exciting bit, you know, prove it can happen and then figure out a way to get it on someone else's plate, you know, and then watch it grow. Like that's, that's what I like to do. I guess new things and start things and build things.
Ben Pearce (34:41.814)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (34:49.462)
Yeah. And that's your whole point is you need the execution. You need the muscle. You need that ability to execute. And otherwise it's just a big idea that goes nowhere. It's not something that comes to fruition.
Mark Renney (34:54.656)
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. And some people love that, you know, which is great, right? I wouldn't want to live in a world full of me. So I'm glad there are other people who really just like love doing that, you know, and they were really good at it. And I think that's like pairing. I think that's why it's really effective when you find those two archetypes and pair them up. you know, I was on the boards of a charity for five years and, you know, my objective
Ben Pearce (35:03.106)
Yeah? Yeah.
Mark Renney (35:29.006)
when I was there, I headed up an IT and digital innovation group there, about a hundred people in the charity. And we did the same thing there as well. You know, we set a strategic working group around this, you know, how do we transform this charity? And then, you there was one person in the business who really sort of stepped up and came forward and really executed on that. You know, and once we saw that, you know, was...
We had tangible projects that we were laying out as a working group and then they would just go and get done. We were seeing software being implemented and processes being streamlined all over the shop and the improvement that it made was massive. We're talking six figures of improvement across the charity. And again, small steps. And I think if you compare those things together, really good stuff starts to happen.
Ben Pearce (36:22.19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, do you know what? I reckon time has almost escaped us, Mark. Really fascinating. So maybe we can start to sort of wrap up. What would be the key takeaways that you'd love people to take from this session today?
Mark Renney (36:28.142)
Mm.
Mark Renney (36:38.2)
So I think.
Mark Renney (36:47.066)
I think one key thing would be, how can businesses be less forgetful? How do you build that business brain? Because I think that is something which is, of all the things we talked about here, it's probably the most actionable thing that business can do to move them forward. And I think one way look at this is that businesses should view, that processes, their systems, as reusable assets that they can make.
Ben Pearce (37:02.734)
Okay.
Mark Renney (37:16.462)
So, you know, if you've got something which is, which is there's constant mistakes being repeated, right? Okay. How do we build the right asset behind this to turn it into the right process, the right checklist, you know, can we automate it? Like what are the things that we can do to make sure that that thing doesn't happen? And there's a good book around this called 24 Assets by Daniel Priestley, which is quite cool as well in terms of how do you view everything across the business as an asset that you can make.
Ben Pearce (37:38.754)
Okay.
Mark Renney (37:45.9)
rather than something which is just like, you know, not that tangible, you know, just something which is kind of trapped in someone's head. So I think that that is one thing. And if I was to give one other thing, Ben, I think it's is just a quick framework and it's something that we call the 1 % club. And I think businesses can find themselves in a situation, right? Where there's so much going on, there's so many things to fix. They just have no idea where it starts.
Ben Pearce (38:05.088)
Okay, okay.
Mark Renney (38:15.562)
And I think that's a really tricky position to be in, right? Because it's like, every time you think about it, just, it's, it's tiring because you know, you try to map out and it's like, God, there's so much, you know, you, fill a Trello board or a big white board or whatever it is. And it's like, God, where do we even start with this? And I think there's a framework we've got, which prefers action around this, which is okay. Like map out as much as you can in two hours, prioritize it, and then focus on making 1 % improvements every week.
Ben Pearce (38:25.454)
You
Mark Renney (38:45.624)
And that is as simple as, every person, you create a small group of people, five people, and every person in that group picks something off the board of things that you've sort of listed out as things which are wrong and just does like one small thing to move towards improving that. you know, five people over 12 weeks making those 1 % changes to improve things makes such a huge difference. And just where this came from.
Ben Pearce (39:11.406)
Okay.
Mark Renney (39:15.566)
So I bought, I'm a business partner in 2020 and I was commercial director. He was, he was ops director and it was, you know, kind of scary, right? Because I, okay, well I've got my job to do, which is already a lot of time. And then suddenly, you know, all the things he has to do, someone's got to do them. Right. And it's looking like it's going to be me and trying to figure out how we do that. So, you know, we had 12 weeks to do it and, after, you know, sort of mapped it all out.
And then a week later, we hadn't made any progress. I was like, if we carry on like this, you know, I'm going to have a real problem because we've already lost a week. So, you know, we mapped all that stuff out and then, you know, my theme at the time was, okay, I want to automate accountancy because that seems to be the thing which is going to have the highest impact. And it's going to be the thing which, well, I really don't want to do it for a start. And I think, you know, I think we can largely automate that.
You know, and then we brought in our accountants and then we, you know, we give them this theme and we said, right, how do we do this? And every week we started to do those things. You know, we, took one thing, we either automate it. Um, you know, we found a way to delegate to someone else or we just stopped doing it. Or, you know, we realized that I would have to do it. And by the end of that 12 weeks, you know, we've got everything moved over to, you know, a manageable situation, but accountancy went from something which was hours and hours a week to maybe two to four hours a month.
You know, we automated payroll. We automated the way that we get receipts and invoices in the business. And it's all really streamlined now. And we actually have a framework around this that we can give away if anyone wants it. You know, so that's the sort of impact it can have. You know, had such a profound impact on me and how I felt about the business at the time. And I think, you know, if you're feeling lost or stuck, you know, think about how something like that can get you started, you know.
Ben Pearce (40:50.337)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (41:06.902)
Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Well, lovely. think key takeaways for me as I sort of reflect on it, know, building on that, you know, just the idea of small things, just constantly doing small things aligned to the big themes, but actually doing stuff. And I love the whole psychological safety of, know, which comes from me as an individual taking accountability and being allowed free to make mistakes and empowered to change things and get
Mark Renney (41:35.693)
Yes.
Ben Pearce (41:36.374)
that whole psychological safety and then taking small steps. I really, really love it. So Mark, thank you so much for everything that you've gone through. If people want to get in touch with you, find out more about you, find out more about Wubble You, where can they get in touch with you?
Mark Renney (41:54.414)
Okay, so two ways. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm quite active on there. So I'm assuming there'll just be a link around somewhere, people can click around that and then.
Ben Pearce (42:01.998)
Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes for people to get a hold of you. Yeah.
Mark Renney (42:04.91)
Amazing. our newsletter, so newsletter.wobblyu.co.uk, which will probably be a link for as well. We create a lot of assets that we give away around things like auto-meeting, accountancy, how to do some of the things that we talked about here. So if you want just access to those things for free, sign up to our newsletter and we'll just land a new inbox every month.
Ben Pearce (42:26.254)
Brilliant. Well, final thing for me to say is really insightful. Thank you so much for your time and energy and for all the insight that you shared with us. So thank you so much, Mark.
Mark Renney (42:38.38)
No, thanks for having me, Ben. I've really enjoyed this. feels kind of cathartic, actually, just sitting and talking about it. know, there's a lot of, you know, like there's a lot of these switches, you know, learned just through observation, but obviously battle scars as well, you know, so it's quite nice to talk about. Thanks, Ben.
Ben Pearce (42:54.838)
Yeah, yeah, well, it's brilliant to have you with us. Thank you so much, Mark.
