Please enjoy this transcript of my conversation with Adam Ambrozy.
Description
This week I spoke to Dawn Leane who believes organisations should focus on developing a culture of diversity and leadership among staff members rather than simply implementing policies of compliance when trying to create a more balanced workforce. I ask Dawn what specific initiative organisations get wrong and we also discuss the need for self-advocacy.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, hello there, boys and girls. Welcome back. And thank you very much for tuning in to yet another episode. And this week I'm talking to who is a former strategy executive converted into tech, entrepreneur innovation, strategist, coach, and speaker, and other makes cultural immersion and cross-cultural team development. The center of his work.
[00:00:25] And this is where we spend most of our time in this episode, talking about. The importance of culture, of course, but also it's maybe especially first time leaders. So people who go from individual contributor roles to first time managers when they need to start looking after not just themselves in their work, but the work of other people and the wellbeing of other people in the workplace environment. So we talk about what's missing in leadership and now then share some of his thoughts on that, where he believes.
[00:00:59] That, what we don't have enough of is emotional agility. And the ability to manage conflict and how to distribute ownership. Work that we do. and basically we talk a lot about unlocking human potential and what that means. And Adam shares some of the methodology and the frameworks that he uses in the work with his clients.
[00:01:24] Hope you enjoy my conversation with Adam Ambrogi. . Okay. Let's go.
[00:01:46] Adam Ambrozy: Let's kick it off.
[00:01:47] Lech: Let's let's kick it off and let's kick it off with my usual question. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
[00:01:53] Adam Ambrozy: That I want to be, I wanted to be at the text, so, you know, I would be playing and following people I would be trying to resolve who stole my neighbors, apples from the door and that kind of stuff. Yeah. That's when I was five and 10, I really intended to be at the next
[00:02:12] Lech: Oh, wow. Amazing.
[00:02:13] Adam Ambrozy: that day.
[00:02:14] Lech: A police detective. I never had a a, a potential detective on the show. That's for sure.
[00:02:20] Adam Ambrozy: Watch out. Watch out to have me here.
[00:02:24] Lech: Do you think there's a connection between you wanting to be a detective detective when you were little, what you do now? Was there any link? Can you see it?
[00:02:32] Adam Ambrozy: Oh, definitely. I think curiosity, what makes people tick? So I think that when you are the detective, of course, usually you investigate investigate crimes. And when you are working with people, then usually yeah. Investigate how you can improve their engagement. Nevertheless. You know that the objective is different.
[00:02:53] One is super serious and one is also serious, but not as crucial for society as the first one. Nevertheless, they both, well, the same thing. Understand the motivation
[00:03:05] and designed for it.
[00:03:06] Lech: Yeah.
[00:03:06] this designed for the trying to figure people out. I think that's a, that's a very good point because obviously we've been talking about a lot of the work that you do. And the, I do that and there is that similarity. We are trying to figure out how people operate, what motivates them, what makes them tick.
[00:03:22] And there is that element of you have to discover that, and it is a bit of a mystery and I don't know about you, but I do get real. Positive satisfaction out of the fact when, when the penny drops for somebody and they change, they realize something and you kind of get to the one, you discover something.
[00:03:38] And you're like, yes, I managed to crack that puzzle, I guess, which is, which is a part of being a detective. Isn't it?
[00:03:44] Adam Ambrozy: Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing because here we are really working for people to be, to be happy, to be more engaged, more satisfied. So in the end, we are working to make this eight or 10 hours suspended. More meaningful for them. So that's the, that's where the beauty comes. And in the end on the business side is extremely core to see that satisfaction and happiness and engagement of people lead to better business results, because then it's easier.
[00:04:13] And since we know it it's much easier to get sponsors for it. There was a much higher. Nowadays about these topics and about unlocking human potential. Also in the context of, of, of AI and automation of certain jobs and this clear idea that actually it's creativity and ability to design, what makes us super different from machines?
[00:04:36] Right. So, I guess that we need to, we need to like enhance the potential that we have within our team, because we're gonna have people in organizations.
[00:04:47] Lech: That's for sure. This is actually the thing you mentioned about AI is something. Spending a little bit more on research and reading when, especially when it comes my way and that's the artificial intelligence and all sorts of robotics and autonomous cars and things like that. How much of that is.
[00:05:03] Actual progress in how we do things and how much of that is actually aimed to replace people, but with more kind of nefarious from the various reasons from a kind of, to get people out of these jobs and kind of deprive people from these jobs, they're kind of more of a, on a negative. I don't want to say conspiracy theory, but there are, there are certain people at the highest levels of service society.
[00:05:23] The top 1% of the top 1% let's say that might have some sorts of interest in removing the human element from that. And it's something that I've in the last few months I've been pondering a little bit more, just seeing kind of what, what that is. What's under the surface, just to have a different perspective, different point of view.
[00:05:38] Have you got any thoughts on that?
[00:05:40] Adam Ambrozy: Actually, I think that the role of technology is to make our life easier. And since, since, you know, since we buy more and more stuff online and we don't need sales assistance to that extent, and you know, you can observe such processes in in many, in many industries. So. Technology is here to help us channel our energy just into the places that matter more than reputable manual activities.
[00:06:09] Right? The question is, can we really upscale people that fast? So they will find their place in society. They will find new jobs, maybe better paid, maybe easier, maybe less manual maybe the jobs that they will be able to flow. Again, as human beings, you know, because we are not talking about 100% of jobs.
[00:06:28] We are talking right now about 20 to 30% of jobs within, I don't know, 10 to 15 years, I think majority of reports, point out that kind of the kind of roadmap in in front of us. So I guess if we fought. I up-skilling people and really make it possible for them to shift, find new jobs and having a source of income and so on.
[00:06:49] This is a great chance for humanity because then machines can do what we've humans really don't like to do.
[00:06:56] Lech: That's a, that's a, that's a very good point. I guess it's very similar to what must have happened during the industrial revolution when we've gone from, you know, small community farms to factories in the fact. And now that step is happening in moving to factories, having. Assembly lines and factories producing stuff.
[00:07:15] Instead of individuals, small companies, organizations, there was displacement of, of individuals as well. People lost their jobs and they had to upscale. And I guess there's, there's always going to be collateral. Damage is just a question of how we handle that. How do we help people navigate that transition?
[00:07:30] Cause I don't know. Research that enough to, to know what happened during the industrial revolution. So was there support for people who didn't know how to do and when they lost their jobs, what happened? Well, I'm guessing must've not greatest considering obviously the early late 19th, early 20th century had issues with economy and number of depressions, but obviously we also have.
[00:07:52] First world war second world war that's had its all its impact. So it's difficult to gauge that. I wonder how will that happen here? I've guess we've got the opportunity that we know more and how to potentially handle that, how to support the people through this, how, how that's going to pan out how it's going to turn out.
[00:08:07] The waits to be seen linked to that is something that we wanted to talk about. And that's basically upskilling people when they go up through the ranks, when they move from being an individual, an individual contributor to being a first time manager. And my take on that is that we definitely don't do a good enough job in supporting people moving into that field.
[00:08:28] Manage our first leader position when they start to look at it and see, because from my point of view, the general logic is you are good at doing your job as an individual contributor. So we're going to promote you so that you can continue doing parts of the job, but also because you know that job, you'll be able to manage people who do that job as well.
[00:08:47] So it will put you above them and that's the kind of magic, but we don't actually give him money and he supports any help, any skill in terms of being a leader, being a good manager on the, on the human side and the individual side, rather than just technical side. What's your take on that?
[00:09:01] Adam Ambrozy: Yeah, I guess that's I guess. The road, the way to become a manager that you described is, is absolutely natural. You are a great specialist, you get great results, and then you get your, your team. And I think what is missing in this in this moment, People, I mean, awareness, how to understand your role as a leader and the leader motivates, and the leader takes care of people.
[00:09:23] The leader makes sure that psychological safety is there. The leader makes sure that everybody has fresh out of spit. Everybody feels heard the leaders make sure that everybody understands, understands the role and how we deliver, how we deliver. And the leader makes sure that we learn together and. Yeah, I believe that it's better than when there is a specialist, because it might be also like kind of a standard paper because, you know, it's like team dynamics is one thing.
[00:09:50] And the standard of delivery we are talking about, and, and we aim to deliver is different than here, especially in the beginning, people quite often understand different things under different labels. So we say, we want to deliver. UX a prototype and, you know, for some people it will be it will be basic, basic French put Saba in a in a white board.
[00:10:12] And for some people it will be sophisticated Adobe XD, clickable product, you know, He w he was where the specialist role comes in a leader. So when the leader is also a good specialist or at least like a former specialist, that's still aware of what's improving in the world standard. So this is the first thing of the reader.
[00:10:32] And the second is exactly what I meant, what we talked about before to really motivate people and to make them warm. Deliver two objectives, develop themselves, collaborate with others and have the full safety to act on who they really are. And I think here exactly, we, we go to to the point, because if you look at education at what we learned at school, nobody really.
[00:11:00] Teach us art teaches us how to be emotionally agile. How to talk about conflict, how to solve it. In many societies, there is a quarter saying that if you don't have anything nice to say, but don't say nothing at all. You know, people don't want to go for confrontations. And on the other hand, we have all the science.
[00:11:23] It's super clear that in order to build healthy relationship or healthy team, you need to be able to manage conflicts properly because from conflicts, really the quality comes in conflict, two perspectives just just class and here's is the thing to be provided together. Like, I guess the problem not fight with one another.
[00:11:45] And this is exactly the clue of, of being a leader. And this is what I think is missing because it's not done for us in societies. Yeah. It's not natural for us in societies. And so we don't Glen and we, we are not aware how important it is to unlock human potential, especially in times when it's, when leadership is not about that much about control, but.
[00:12:10] Distributing ownership in order to act fast, to launch fast, to go to market fast. And, you know, we expect people to take these decisions and we can take 50 decisions a day and together with our people, it can be 500 decisions at the end. This is the ultimate objective of any leader right now to unlock people.
[00:12:31] And a lot of people think that it is. Tools or about approaches, not about soft elements in it, really how to, how to, how to understand the basic concepts, but for us, it's psychological safety, emotional agility, feedback, non-violent communication. And at the team level, the additional skills. This knees are knocking, and this is what we need to tackle all of us.
[00:12:54] And I think this is one of the hypothesis that we have scientifically, it's very valid that this is where the growth potential really is in unlocking because when people collaborate. Better when they are not afraid to share what they are not afraid to ask for help when they are not afraid to give feedback or get feedback, then they can move in their tasks faster.
[00:13:16] And thanks for the perspective and openness and all the information that they collect. They don't take it as criticism. They take as a growth opportunity and thanks to it, stand that has the great chance to improve. And this is basically what the leaders need to do. Does that make sense?
[00:13:32] Lech: Oh, I think it's make perfect sense. It makes perfect sense to me. I really like how you, how you phrase that. And I think that's something. People need to hear that's what leadership is now, because we do have a misunderstanding of a concept of who or what a leader is. Yes, we have that Jim Martin manager versus leader debate.
[00:13:51] We had that for decades. The other debate is, are you born a leader or you're not born a leader, but then. All of that stems down to what is a leader who is a leader. And I think you've, you've defined, it defined it really, really well. There's a few things that you you've mentioned that, but the one that really catches my attention, I want to ask the question you said about that separation, that a leader has to have the, the human skills to, to, to manage a team, but also has to have that specific technical knowledge potential for role.
[00:14:20] Do you think it's possible for a leader not to have that and still be good at what they.
[00:14:25] Adam Ambrozy: Well, I guess it depends on how sophisticated the topic really is and how much change is happening around the topic in the world, in the industry. Because I guess that you don't have to be highly specialized if you are a leader, for instance, I don't know if you want to say as a leader, let's say, and you have some experience in sales and you know how to build relationships and so on, and you are also good with numbers.
[00:14:51] So you can actually. Manage objectives properly and so on. And you have all the then you don't have it. It's to keep up being a specialist, you know, knowing all the methods that are, that are out there. And so let's say that you are a, I dunno, you are producing a digital product and the, and the context and the systems, how we produce digital context, constantly change.
[00:15:14] And for him. Maybe five years ago, you used to do some interviews, get some questionnaire. And right now you have some sophisticated feedback generation platforms that collect back from many sources automatically. And then you can manage the data, build your questionnaires and so on. And if you, if you have not apt to all these new standards that appear in the market, then you will not be able to ensure that your team is using the best possible world-class standard. You know what I mean? In sales, it's not the issue, but when you are forced as building digital digital product, and for us like, like me, because it's my example until 2017, I was building digital products and then I focused on team development and I still sometimes help teams with my research expertise, my strategy expertise, or my product owner expertise.
[00:16:03] But yeah, yeah. And I'm still outdated. I still work a lot on team development with leaders, from organizations that develop digital products. So I have the opportunity because, you know, I wanted to be a active in the past. I have this opportunity to still, to still see what's changing in the industry since I'm still in touch.
[00:16:25] And I guess if I had to, if I were to, to, to take a sales role or a sales leader, You know, I don't have this challenge for me. My, my specialty is me being able to build long lasting relationships with clients. And this is the trench and here are the digital product. The strength is optimize the processes and to really.
[00:16:49] Built open communication structure. So everybody has the data from feedback that they need because sometimes customer success needs data. Census data, product needs, data and marketing is data leaders data. And when you have all this data in one place, then you have one platform you don't have like back then 10 or five or 10 years to go one person presenting and storing and briefing everybody.
[00:17:10] Yeah. So I guess that that's, this is what, I mean, it doesn't make sense.
[00:17:15] Lech: It does make sense. The reason I asked that because I've been increasingly fascinated with the topic of the concept of leader coaches, more than leader managers. And in, in that structure where a leader is just a coach, they, their role is focused on. Developing people, all that stuff that we've just mentioned about the, you know, psychological safety, emotional agility, and so on and so forth and looking at people's career progression as well to a certain extent.
[00:17:43] So there's a combination of that. But also that there's a part of that role that is focused on removing barriers for the team through the through potential career development. And I guess. In that context you could throw in what you just mentioned, that the leader needs to be aware of the latest developments to make sure that the teams are using the right thing.
[00:18:02] But that role moves away from the usual manager, a task master. I like to call it a, to do list manager. That's, that's kind of my favorite expression to, for this setup, because I figured that that's what happens when you have a leader coach in one person. And in that same person, you have a manager of that site who has that specific technical knowledge because you remove that element for that specific technical knowledge and potentially maybe a cooperator in that development element, for sure.
[00:18:30] But majority of the time, you actually rely on the individuals on your team to carry out that task, to be responsible for making sure that we use the latest technologies, but for, to be able to do that, you need to give them that autonomy to say, listen, I'm here if you need me, but overall you're adults, you've got your targets.
[00:18:48] We set them together. And it's up to you to meet them. And these targets fits into the targets for the, for the, for the, for the organization. They may fit into the targets for the, for, for the whole company, for example. So that's kind of that, and that, that affect that. And I, that's why I'm thinking more and more.
[00:19:05] Do we actually need managers who have that specific technical knowledge or are organizations more likely to go down that route? Because I've seen quite a few examples with many organizations could do half that. Granted they weren't very much on the technical side, like truly taking, because I struggled to see that happening presented potentially in factories just yet or where there is real technical engineering knowledge that is required that you will have, then you have slightly different roles.
[00:19:31] It's, it's, it's still very much in the progress, but that's, that was kind of the reason for that question. Coming back again to that further to those first time managers, we said what's missing from leadership in general. What leadership is we believe how it should be set up. What is it that first-time managers really need in the work that you do?
[00:19:50] What have you found that that's really, that's something that they need, but they're not getting enough of.
[00:19:55] Adam Ambrozy: They quite often have very good ideas the beginning. So, so I'm actually surprised lately how many young people are interested in the new concepts, like psychological safety, like a team, a team dynamics. So a lot of nerds who like to get into details. And also more than that, Who would like to work with data.
[00:20:19] So, so to do regular assessments, to include these questions in retrospectives and so on and so forth this whole I'm very, very surprised, positively surprised when it comes to this. And I guess that's, that's the second, the question, like the, what was the question?
[00:20:38] Lech: what's missing there. You reckon that the first time leaders don't get enough of, to be able to do their job.
[00:20:43] Adam Ambrozy: So they have a great, great ideas, quite often great ideas from from the beginning, but they missed self-confidence. They, they feel it intuitively, but it's not like they have awareness that, for instance, you mentioned just to give an example, you mentioned that some, some managers are coaches, right.
[00:21:00] And choose being a coaches. If a manager chooses being a coach from day one, when they. It will not work because in the beginning, the leader needs to be directive needs to take, to improve the conflict, need to build the team, need to need to move, bring understanding who can do what with whom in order to get the best standard.
[00:21:18] And this process will, will last several weeks. I don't know what best, best case scenario of eight to 12 weeks. And so, so I. Also this in leaders, in young leaders quite often that they believe, okay, I have a coaching site. I want to engage people. This is a new school. This is new work. I want to be a coach, not manager.
[00:21:39] I want to give them ownership from the beginning and not to control them. And I think it's a great approach and it might work. You need to remember that in the beginning, we need to be directive. I think Nick Nick, right from hyper islands here, it just made the topic, explaining how the UConn slash Susan Miller model works and how things develop over time.
[00:22:02] And this is exactly it. Let's get back to it. This moment in the beginning, stage one, we sometimes call it cocktail party when everybody is nice to one another, when people are afraid to go in class in conflict. And when people are still afraid to speak, speak out, honestly, because they they don't want to risk the personal relationship that there's only been like right now.
[00:22:29] And the leader needs to get very, there needs to be directive in the beginning. And I think that to wrap it up, I think the young leaders are just amazing, have amazing potential. Shall they? They still, what they can build fast when they become leaders. Is this. And awareness. What's important how to measure it, how to manage it and be supported because sometimes they have crazy ideas to test crazy ideas about processes, crazy ideas about team organization.
[00:23:01] And I think our role is to give them a self-confidence because when you have crazy disruptive ideas that might work, but everybody is a little bit style and say, oh no, no. It's like. This is too far, maybe next year. And so sometimes we need to start doing things and testing things to build your case, to build your buy-in proposal bias, which you know, so I think that's, that's, that's what missing.
[00:23:26] So a little bit of awareness and knowledge, how to monitor and manage plus self-confidence and this is where we come from.
[00:23:33] Lech: I'm glad you made mention Nick. Right? Cause he was actually one of the first guests, the first ever first ever episode of this podcast that he was on when we talked about self-leadership and all sorts of things. And he did mention the team development model that you you've mentioned as well. So I highly recommend anyone listening to, to check out that episode to the very first episode that I've asked for.
[00:23:55] We got this. I know that you do obviously a lot of work with first time managed Vista first time leaders. And there's, there's a framework that you follow. Would you be able to share some of the, kind of maybe a high level overview of the steps that you take and kind of how you utilize what you do in that process to support first time leaders going into these roles?
[00:24:15] Basic, just to give it a little bit more tangible structure.
[00:24:18] Adam Ambrozy: Yes. Sure. So actually I'd make them work, but we don't, we activate great culture. So we, we would meet with a leader. Teams, usually on a weekly basis for two hours, we will reflect about challenges. And we will design tailored programs to address these challenges next week. So it was always.
[00:24:40] Working with us, but you don't wait for four weeks for an intervention. You have this intervention almost immediately or next week. And when it comes to, to this focus on first leaders and what we do, we call it a rainbow pill. So actually there is a vision inside of us that every human can be the best version of themselves by master.
[00:25:04] Mastering the core. So psychological safety, how to measure, how to manage there is feedback, the three models of feedback, and that are very useful to really use feedback for growth. Not for, not very, to spark conflicts, but there are models. You can learn this models and you can use them.
[00:25:24] There is not communication and actively sending in order to inspire it. That's speaking from the perspective of needs and also listening to the needs of others and keeping the con the conversation focused on the needs. Because quite often, when we discuss, we share a lot of we should, our emotional state, we should have frustration and so on.
[00:25:45] We just respond. We don't listen. And this is super important skill for leaders to develop. And the fourth, the fourth is self-awareness and emotional agility. So the idea that you are not your emotion, you feel your emotion and you might observe and use your emotions for better. Decision-making. So basically this form, psychological safety feedback, non-violent communication and active listening and self-awareness and emotional agility.
[00:26:12] And this is like a pill that, that is the core of all our programs. And. we we might be working with teams on the scale. So submitting them, as I mentioned before every week for a 4, 4, 2 hour session we might also work directly with leaders and this really depends on the organization. Some organizations prefer.
[00:26:33] Weekly meetings, some organization as a, as a right now, they wants to have this pill in a week. So there's a five days onboarding program for young leaders and everybody who is becoming a leader has this five days. And from five days we have three hours free, free, free, free, free. When we train these stills and then after a week, we would have reflection with his leaders.
[00:26:53] After another week, we would have reflection with these leaders. And of course we are also available for them as synchronously. So whenever they have questions they just arrived, right. Or send us a quick recording going along with that question or that topic. And we will do recalls and send them back out.
[00:27:12] And this this is very important because in the end, it's not about what you. That you can learn something on a Friday and you will be using it forever because on Monday you will have this micro moment when he was feeling all vulnerable. Oh my God, should I use this model of feedback right now or not is, and you might try, you might ask, and sometimes you need this, this, this micro support and sharing immediately with somebody and then almost generating a reflection.
[00:27:36] With your coach. Well, and these are the great moments because in these moments, when you capture people in these moments and when you are available to them in this moment, they call you and they ask, oh, am I in this situation? What do you think I'm planning to go this and this, and this is the moment when, when, when self-confidence can be built and then they can try it and they can still, so my, my role then is to give them the, the.
[00:27:59] Like make sure that they have enough distance to take the right decision for themselves and support, whatever, whatever I see they want to test, you know, and make sure that it makes sense and give them a little bit of strategy also on this or the team complex outlook or point out some risks that might happen. it's amazing. It's amazing project. But just to answer your question briefly, it's psychological safety feedback, nonviolent communication, and active listening and self-awareness and emotional agility. And this is the magic pill that we would recommend to everybody, everybody to take because. You are really able to build open communication structures and then it just feels better in the end.
[00:28:39] It's just more human
[00:28:41] Lech: Yeah.
[00:28:42] Adam Ambrozy: to be like this and paradoxically or, or maybe, or maybe thanks to the universe. It's very, very much business viable to invest in such processes because they clearly lead to better to enhanced time to task. So efficiency just.
[00:28:59] Lech: Fascinating. I've I really like how you summarized it in a, in kind of the four elements. They said that that pill, that you've, that you've mentioned, that's one part, but also by going into, into detail describing how that works and how that process works with the organization. I think highlighted for me, something that is often also, I don't want to say missing, but definitely misunderstood.
[00:29:22] We are impacted. Beings in general as, as a, as a whole. And we want pills that fix the problem straight away. We do something on them on a Friday, and we expect to be able to, to use it on the Monday for the rest of our lives. But we know that doesn't, that doesn't work that way. So I like the fact that you said that you do that support for, for several weeks after.
[00:29:44] Because that's when where you can start actually applying after you had the chance to self-reflect after your time, have time to digest everything that you learned during the workshop session, then you will start noticing things that you've never noticed before. And if all of a sudden, if you know, somebody tells you don't think about a yellow car, first of all, you start thinking about a yellow car.
[00:30:05] And the second thing is you start noticing yellow. All around you when you're walking down the street, right? You, we all know that story. This is similar. Somebody told you how to build, trust, how to do feed, but how to communicate better. You start spotting these opportunities of when that is, because your perception of the world around you has changed.
[00:30:20] And that happens over time. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes weeks and months to develop. And I think that's another thing that we reading introduced is that when we work with them, Whether you're external consultant like you and I, or whether you're a leader coach within an organization and you take on that role to develop your people.
[00:30:37] It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take weeks and months for that to start coming, coming through for people to benefit from that. The other question I wanted to ask you was in, in relation to, to what you've mentioned is that what happens when you. Kind of leave the organization when that period of, of a few weeks, a couple of that you've been working with them stomps.
[00:30:59] Where, where does that go then? Do you train people within the organization to support them? Do or do you just kind of rely on that, that what they've learned is enough to carry them forward?
[00:31:10] Adam Ambrozy: I'll give you an example. When we joined companies, it's usually like 4, 5, 6 months process. Right now we are running toward two of them and four first usually the first thing that we do, we do kind of have a planning session aligned. Start alignment session. It's quite often connected also with OKR planning sessions.
[00:31:31] So we had like a seasonal for them in June. The next one in quarter four it's also, it usually starts with it. And then we go for the training of appeal to the leadership, the leadership gets it. And then we we train teams. We have like trainings in teams and doing the trainings. We, we, we already select people for training.
[00:31:51] In the third or fourth month, we already train the trainer and observe the trainers will join them meetings that the trainers also also lead and see how we would go. And then later on when the program, what our active engagement by active, I mean like 70, 80 hours a month, 100 event. And when this engagement is, is over, then they joined the group. This is still very fresh because we have that light, like, you know, we are still a reasonably young company. And so these are the first cases that we have talking about, but what right now, what we are doing, we are connecting people from different companies to join us. Or during week we have like a special meetup for this making world lab.
[00:32:35] It's called a w you will find us on
[00:32:37] and we would facilitate that. And then we'll be sharing. Their experiences, their ideas. We will be co-creating together. Some disruptive tools, some disruptive approaches, some workshops. Sometimes we will be, you know, like acting, we'll be observing what's going on in social science right now, or, or how the engagement changes in COVID times to different groups.
[00:33:00] And then we will design sessions around around it and all these people. Who who have grown already with us joining the session to share also to mentor other people. So in the end, our intention is to share this rainbow pill with at least 100 million people until 2031. So that's the big
[00:33:19] Lech: Oh, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. You've, you've gone down the road of something that I've been increasingly working on as well is basically creating what Seth golden calls, a tribe of people who believe the same things and working with it and have a shared goal of some sorts and are United by that.
[00:33:36] And they can build a community around. I think it's a fascinating thing. The other thing that you also mentioned What kind of what the benefits of this are in, in terms of potential gains for, for a business, more part facts or hard figures kind of situation. And I'm sure you must've had these discussions because I know I've had a lot of them and I always wonder how best to.
[00:33:55] I dunno, maybe with the word convinced is the right words to use here, but at the very least can justify and explain the story. But this type of investment for an organizations is not obvious, just financial, directly financial, but it's also time, which then translates into time of people that they're not producing work, but they're focusing on stuff else, which then gives the, obviously the long-term gains.
[00:34:19] There is an element of return on investment in all of this. In these discussions when you have, I don't know, a business leader or business owner CEO, who's not sort of convinced. He's heard that this has got benefits, but he's still very much in the old school numbers. First people, second attitude. How do you have that conversation?
[00:34:39] How do you kind of show it to them that there's real merit and benefit, but in the long-term they will get greater return on investment. They could ever imagine if they hadn't.
[00:34:49] Adam Ambrozy: For the first research sessions that I did around the top. Yeah. In 2016, while I was managing director of one of the biggest digital advertising agencies, shout that you can count on improvement of 20% within the first three months, 20% in time of tasks. So what, what two people, five.
[00:35:09] We'll take them four days. And this is quite easy to measure when it comes to, to the investment, because sometimes, you know, when clients calculate, calculate all the hours and the budget is around 70,000 Euro, they say, oh my God, 70,000 Euro. And then when you calculate that you have 72. And so the $70 work out more, more or less, more than 10,000, 10,000 hours a month.
[00:35:34] And if you have 20% of increase here, and if you can measure this 20, 20% of increase on a test team, so two to make it still, the client feels safe, that you know, that you will bring certain value that th th th that he or she doesn't need to invest 70 or 100 K right. Budget, but they can test. So I think it's, it's a, it's a method to build.
[00:35:59] The way to go is to build to show the client real data from your case studies, if you want, we right now, sometimes give a guarantee to our clients. If clients go with full transparency and they share data with us, we give guarantee that either there is a increased either enhancement. That is actually measurable and it's valid or not.
[00:36:21] And if not, the clients still can use more services of us more and more until we have the results that we agreed. So I guess it's about, yeah. So to wrap it up, it's about bringing the result. From from, from the old based studies and from other case studies and market, it's about making the investment small in the beginning, but still like you can, they can check whether you bring real value.
[00:36:50] And and yeah, and in the end, it's about calculating how much wind they might have in six months. From my perspective for the 70, 70 people company, the win is four X. So you invest 70, you get 280 in surplus efficiency.
[00:37:08] Lech: Okay. So it's basically about painted that picture of a, not kind of what what's not only what's possible or what they might get out of it, but then also trying in small chunks. So testing and iterating, trying and iterating different things and seeing kind of what results come out of it. And just bit by bit that is so that's kind of the attitude I've been taking, the kind of conversations I've been having, but not a lot of people, even if you think of, of leaders.
[00:37:34] Organizations that they, they see the benefit. They see the potential here and they want to sell it. They want to pitch it to the senior leadership team, to the C the C suite to get buy-in for this. I think the same logic will apply is to try not necessarily change. The whole structure and the whole fiber of the organization, but start with one team, one project team, one initiative, and prove that it's possible and potential.
[00:37:59] What, what, what results will come out of this? And then two things I'm pretty certain will happen. First of all, you will get that buy-in from the senior senior leadership team. The second thing that is likely to happen, other teams will start noticing. Ooh, how the hell did they do that? How did they, how did they manage to achieve that it's such a short or will or whatever that then, you know, you'll start breaking the mold and that then will create a third thing that is so, so important.
[00:38:24] Not only the buy-in from the top, but also the need generation demand from the bottom. So it's a two-pronged approach because as we know, and I'm sure you've, again, you've experienced this when there's an initiative that comes from the top from the HR departments to get by. In the structure throughout the organizations is a little bit more difficult if there is not the right culture in place already for these types of activities.
[00:38:47] But then if the buy-in comes from both sides, then it's much easier to introduce these things. It's, it's been fascinating to listen to this and I'm sure we could be going on about this for days on end. But I'm, I'm really curious. What have you got going on in the next few? That you are really, really excited about any, any programs, any workshops and frameworks that you're launching that are worth people checking out.
[00:39:11] Adam Ambrozy: Definitively, definitely one offer that we are focused on right now. Is an offer for culture development or co cultural evolution for startups. And we focus on startups, startups of serious CVSA. And we have right now two processes two processes with startups this five months. And we are still selling.
[00:39:30] For one standup of CDSB to be a little bit CR so so this is one, the second is the young leaders programs and here we go. We go with companies from all walks of life, with big clients big accounts like IBM and also with startups. And maybe we'll also open it, open up this program as an, as an open, open online program. Like life, but but open for anybody who'd like to join. So definitely have a look at, make the work.com have a look at Luma, have a look at meetup. A lot of there's a lot of stuff going on for, for the autumn and reach out if you want to. Yeah. If you want to discuss your country, it's time to start ending from the potential that is still unlocked in in your organization.
[00:40:18] Lech: And what's the best way to, to get in touch with you.
[00:40:21] Adam Ambrozy: LinkedIn websites, telephone. Actually, you can get my phone number from the website. So just call me and let's have a, let's have a chat. There's nothing better than great chats. Great initial chat over a cup of coffee.
[00:40:35] Lech: That's that's very true. That is very true. Thank you very much for your time today and sharing the knowledge with us. Thank you.
[00:40:43] Adam Ambrozy: Thank you so much for having left and all our lovely listeners have a great day develop your culture, smile a lot. And remember business results comes from people's satisfaction. So just do it and have fun of it.
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