The Power of Young Leaders with Perry Maddox

Graham Allcott 1:32

Perry Maddox, how are you?

Perry Maddox 1:33

I'm well, thanks. Great to be with you today.

Graham Allcott 1:35

So you're the CEO of Restless Development. Do you want to start just by explaining to people who have not come across restless development before, like, who they are, what they do?

Perry Maddox 1:46

Resteless Development, we are all about young leaders. And what we do is we work with young leaders from around the world to tackle the problems that they they think are most important, whether that's getting a job or kind of taking care of their families or playing a role in and how their countries and communities work. We work with young people to kind of make change happen. And most of that's volunteer power we work with about, you know, 1000 volunteers around the world and, you know, 1600 Youth organisations out there to help them do do that even better. So whether or not the individual young leader and volunteer, kind of a rural community, getting it done, or kind of young leaders coming together to shape change in the world, it's all about that kind of notion of tapping into youth to to make the world a better

Graham Allcott 2:29

place, restless development used to have another name as pw student partnerships worldwide, which is, which is how I first came across the organisation and, and how we connected. And that was because I went to Uganda and volunteered with with restless myself when I was in my younger days, and it was called SP w out in Uganda. So I guess the first question, I want to just ask you about that I had an incredible experience with that. And that must be a big part of just what makes the organisation special that people come back from these experiences, and then tell these incredible stories about the leaders they've met in other countries and the work that they've been doing right,

Perry Maddox 3:08

I think what Russ does really well, and what makes us kind of who we are, is you've got young people out there leading change volunteering, you know, running programmes, working in schools, you know, working with farmers, all that good stuff. But by virtue of their age, they're also growing and learning at the same time. And so you've gotten kind of to change processes going on at the same time. And I think, you know, one of the things we really try to do is push the notion of leadership, it's got nothing to do with the title, you don't need to be a CEO. And I think SEO is the least important person in the organisation. I think those volunteers out there leading leading our worker, are the ones who are truly leading and, and so you get this kind of lovely dual benefit of kind of both creating impact, but also kind of unleashing supporting, encouraging another generation of leaders. And yeah, a lot of them come back to work with us. And it really exciting we run into them a lot of times you'll you'll walk into a ministry or government office somewhere and you'll find a former volunteer just sitting there, you know, making decisions. And so that's, that's a, there's a lot of joy in that for sure.

Graham Allcott 4:02

And a lot of my early career was also in, in enabling young people as part of other organisations and stuff and, you know, helping young people to volunteer and make change. And I think I often used to say, you know, when I was talking about that work to funders, or other stakeholders, or whatever, is that there's something there's something really magical about change being led by young people, because often young people just, they don't have the trappings of needing everything to be done with, you know, fancy jeeps and four by fours. And also, they're just, you don't think about myself here when I was younger, it's like you're you're naive enough to believe that you can change the world. And so you do, as opposed to being kind of, you know, bogged down in bureaucracy and systems and all that kind of stuff, and then you don't, so do you find that the, I guess the downside of that is sometimes that you know, do The established funders and you know, governments in the countries you're in, do they take you a bit less Seriously? Because there's less older people in the room? And is that is that a problem? for you as an organisation?

Perry Maddox 5:12

It is a problem with more traditional organisations or institutions or maybe more just traditional power holders and individuals I, you know, I think we have to work doubly hard to prove impact and to show that young people are, don't just bring the kind of fire the energy and the passion, but they, they create better results, you know, and it's not across everything. And people aren't expert in everything. But the kinds of areas where we have them working, reaching out to fellow youth around sensitive topics, mobilising engaging communities, why because the majority of almost every community in developing world is under 30 years of age. And so you're not just kind of it's not just like a nice to have this is a value addition. And what we often say to those partners, and you know, it doesn't really matter who we're meeting, I kind of say, how can we help, because half the community you're trying to serve with this water programme, or this education programme of this health programme, this business, half of the unemployed people, they're young, half the entrepreneurs are young, half of the, you know, the sex workers are young and half of the health workers are young. What we're offering you here is kind of a, you know, unfettered access to here and user to make your work better. And so you know, we have to make that case of a lot of people. But I will say it's changing 10 years ago, we rarely get the room nowadays, we can get young people in the room, the question is how meaningfully engaged it's going to be and so you do see that kind of slowly changing. But yeah, there's some old folks out there who just go, No, they're, they're young, and they don't know. And you can either choose to engage with that and challenge it. Or we can go to people who are actually excited about youth, because there's a whole group of funders and partners out there who see what young people bring in, they want to work directly into that. And so I think it's kind of a little bit of a judgement call and and do you play the hot hands and run with people who already know what use is? Or do you take the long kind of burn? And give it's these big organisations and governments of whole countries that they need to engage youth the

Graham Allcott 6:56

right way? And

Perry Maddox 6:57

it's a little bit of both? But um, yeah, I know that feeling of trying to make the case for youth,

Graham Allcott 7:01

and you've been the CEO now for a couple of years. Can you just tell us a bit more about your journey? So how did you? How did you get into the whole area of working in international development, how'd you get into restless more was that was that route through to becoming the CEO,

Perry Maddox 7:15

I'd never set out to do it. And I'm glad I didn't, I came into this field of kind of international development, community development through Spanish, I love speaking Spanish and I was studying Spanish and I spent a fair bit of time overseas. in Central America, I'm from the US and just language wise and and kind of came across this field of community development and international development and fell in love with it. And it made sense to me, it kind of spoke to the social justice kind of that that my parents had instilled in me in it, and I enjoyed it. And to be really honest, at a very personal transactional level, I was happy doing it, you know, and then and it was a bit selfish, but I enjoyed this work, and I and so the first kind of 10 years of my career were in Latin America. And you know, really excitingly I kind of hit a glass ceiling there because there's so much talent, homegrown talent and Latin America with a with education systems as they are that you don't need a lot of experts and the mix them, actually you shouldn't have them. So, you know, I had that kind of ground grassroots experience and learned and I actually got downsized, I got downsized out of a job in the Peace Corps in 2008. With that financial crash, they had to cut back on management and I was the little one on the on the totem pole there. And so I got cut. And about that time came across this organisation SP w that was looking for young leaders and stars aligned. And so I, I went to Uganda and started there. And, you know, in many ways, it was the best of Peace Corps of kind of volunteer led chains, community led chains, but even better, because these were young Ugandans in their own communities and their own country leading that change with a couple foreign folks, which were nice kind of catalysts and good relationship. And we went from there. And you know, I, I think what has to happen in it and international developers, you have to work yourself out of a job, especially if you're a foreigner, like me, it's just morally wrong, to be on the front line, delivering programmes for your whole career, when that couldn't be done by community members who know that community way better, you know. And so, as I became the director of our country programming in Uganda, I really began to understand my value addition was much more of the kind of the admin the leadership space, making the organisation work, you know, convincing the funders and the partners and to enable the work so that the 250 kind of staff and volunteers to go off and do their work better. And then kind of stepping back from the front line to enable that was really fun. And I kind of fell in love with building organisations and fell in love with efficiency and all kinds of nerdy, nerdy things like that, and how do you make this work? And so I spent about six years as our CEO, kind of helping the global agency to perform and through a period of rapid growth where we kind of tripled in size in about five years. And it was a fun time. The Chief Operating Officer tried to hold all that together. And yeah, that was lucky enough to get chosen to be the CEO, three and a half years ago. And I continue to do that and try to walk that line of how do I both represent and use my role to bring in more resources and attention for youth without crowding out youth? And how do I make sure that youth voice is always front and centre. And if you need to see, you can roll me out, right. But really, we're interested in making sure that we're serving people as best we can.

Graham Allcott 10:19

I wanted to just pick up on a couple of things there and then and shift the focus to Black Lives Matter. And I read a couple of really interesting things that you wrote about that. But it sort of strikes me that one of the things that could be difficult about that whole agenda that you were talking about there of how do I get out of the way and give that leadership role to people in the country and, you know, and sort of put yourself out of a job, obviously, the, I guess the the kind of spiritual home of where this whole organisation came from, was a very posh private school in in London, and the headmaster at the time having the idea to do it. And I remember I actually, I actually knew Jim Cogan, who was the original founder of SP Wu a little bit because I was on a board with him. And I remember this line in his after he died. There was this eulogy about him in an email that went around. And one of the lines in this email was that he would give all these these, you know, sort of posh private school kids in London, these envelopes and say, Give this to Gabriel Amaury, he's a man who will meet you in Kampala, and then these people would just get on the plane, and sort of care to compile. But there's something very, you know, there's something very colonial about that. And, you know, it feels uncomfortably so in the context of black lives matter. But your response to that just feels like it's been very thoughtful in leading the organisation, you know, through its response to that last matter, and how you make change within the organisation. So, I just love you to tell that story. Because, like, from what I've read, and the sort of blog post post, documenting it, about it, it feels just a lot more thoughtful and action orientated than I've seen from, actually from a lot of people in the corporate space.

Perry Maddox 12:20

Glad to hear that I, I think in many ways, they got the kind of changes that we've LED, and the learning we're still doing and aspire to, to Colonial law are kind of roots were in terms of geography and where it came out of Westminster School, like in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, you know, I mean, how much more, you know, kind of how much more can you get there, the spirit of Russell's was always pretty power shifting, pretty, pretty power restorative, I mean, to be honest, pretty, pretty kind of middle finger to the system. And, you know, I, from what I understand about Gemini, he was he was a rebel. You know, it was a rebellious radical idea in 1985, to say, let's get young people to lead change. And, you know, in the 20 years before I kind of joined, I, you know, that we began to really kind of understand that those young people should be bought some from overseas, but you know, 90 95%, from their home countries, and, and so, I joined that organisation, that's why I joined. I mean, I love Peace Corps, but I don't think you should have to import all of those kinds of volunteers. And so I found this organisation that was the best of volunteering, but also kind of nationally grounded and therefore more likely to be legitimate and sustainable. So that in many ways that I think the the ethos was there, but it was an ethos from the 80s. And that obviously needs to change. And, and, you know, I had a really funny thing happened about not funny, it was quite striking. When I applied to be the CEO, and I got the job. And because I had access to all the files, like they somebody has left a file on the server, they'd run a consultation, while all of our global staff, asking, you know, the recruiters that run in consultation with all of our global staff asking, what do you want to see in the next CEO. And because of anonymized, I don't think I broke any confidentiality and reading that document. But I was like, I want to know, right? I want to know what my people want from me. And it was brilliant, you know, and I just scan through it. And there's a couple 100 responses in there. And they're really, really helpful in terms of, you know, one of the big things that came out was like humility and all these kind of different things. That's really, you know, I've got to you know, it's really helpful as a as a new leader, but there was one line in there. And it's just one line out of 300 people that said, Not another white, straight Western man, right, because I followed too, and, and I got the job. And this was like week one, and I just read it and it was like, somebody hit me the chest, the sledgehammer it was just massively deflated, for a microsecond. And then you go, Oh, no, I totally agree about that. You know, and it's one of those things where it's like, intellectually, I totally agree with that. And personally, it's like, oh, and and you go, all right. So what do I do with that? You know, and what do you do that it was just so lucky to have had that moment? I would hope that if we read that consultation this year, we probably have about 200 people saying the same thing. But It kind of set out in a go, right? So how do I use the CEO role to, to, to address those imbalances of power those injustices that the way that kind of, you know, racist systems manifest themselves within our organisation, because they manifest within every organisation, and it was quite freeing in a way. And, and I hate to say it, it's almost easier as a white man to lead this charge, because you've got the kind of platform and you can you can speak truth to other white men. And so and it's not just white men, but like, but let's be honest, there's a lot of folks that need to be moved on that kind of agenda. And so I think the kind of the roots and shoots that were already there in Russell's somebody, you know, I don't know who wrote that comment, somebody writing that comment was enough of a little fire that was led. And we kind of came in, and we built a new strategy, the whole strategy was about distributing power across our global agents and not having a headquarters. But convening all of our directors globally, once a year as a mobile headquarters, we made decisions and for consensus, and so like, a lot of those pieces were in motion, and we were working on them. And then, you know, Black Lives Matters really accelerated after George Florida was was murdered. Andyou know, none of it felt foreign to us.

But it was clear that we needed to step up our game. And I think the big kind of change for us was understanding how power manifests itself. And you know, understand that it's not enough just to say, well, racism is bad, of course, racism. So we all believe that. You wouldn't, hopefully, you would be working in Russells if you don't, but to understand that, actually, systemic racism manifests itself and like every bit of our work, and to hold that mirror up and go, Oh, okay, this is a much bigger job. And it's not about just, you know, equal opportunities and, and building diverse teams, it's about fundamentally looking in the mirror and going, we're just power set in this relationship, and Is it because of race. And then of course, you wind that out to all kinds of gender and sexuality and everything. And it was, it just it resonated deep down. And I had a couple, I had an interesting recruitment at the time, where I was recruiting for a new director, and we just started asking about and interviews and, and it turned out, one of the candidates was so excited and so skilled in this area. And he comes from a finance background. You know, we're hiring a finance director who started talking about this in the interview, and we've all done something good here, you know, and we just did a couple of our directors just delete that process. And what they said we need to do is, let's do a listening exercise. So they did one listening, and they said, Oh, we need to do a lot more. You know, we listened out there and listened, all of our staff started talking about this stuff. And the more we talked about it, the more our staff opened up. And we just we spent a long time asking you listening, and how does this manifest and because Perry Maddox, white male CEO is not gonna see it, not not across the global agency. But if you're asking all of your drivers and your interns and your assumptions and your programme coordinators around the world, you start to put all that together, and you get a really compelling map, what we're doing well and what we're not. And I think you know, that that just built off the existing values, and allowed us to kind of build an anti racism strategy that made sense to our people. So that kind of happened. And my approach as a CEO was to empower and enable that, but to get out of the way, and trust that process, so that I could actually make a couple other changes that were really easy to make. With almost, you needed a top down executive decision. And so what I started to do in the meantime, was just to start to shift structure. I was looking at our senior leadership team, and we have, we've had great senior leaders over the years, but they've been disproportionately from London, as a result, less representative of our global kind of diversity. We work in 10 countries around Africa, Asia, and I was looking at why and it was because all of our directors, were making the move from the kind of number two function in our London office. So I kind of finance number two was jumping into that finance director, our fundraiser was, Okay, stop, yeah, rather than our country directors, who in many ways are more executive and much more like me, they weren't coming through that. And so we just started making structural changes. And I looked at one of these roles need to sit in London, you know, there's, there's no point I don't need to sit in London anymore. And if I've built my career up to a point where I'm ready to have a run a CEO job, I've probably got a family, or I've got some ties and what I'm going to uproot from India to come to London to this job, or I'm going to leave Zimbabwe to do that. I mean, there's just some stupid barriers, they're easy to fix. And so I started to kind of put my leadership team across the world and, and at the same time, we had a really interesting kind of feedback from the listing exercise, as I said, Why are we paying different salaries for foreign staff versus national? Now, we'd always done that most people do that in the field. And the reason we did is because it's a higher costs if you're working overseas, Yeah, fine. But the problem was most of those staff tended to be white. It was actually a manifestation of kind of systemic racism when what we thought was actually a pretty fair pay approach. And so we, you know, as a CEO just said, level it. Let's just level it. And we went out to our directors are happy and we just levelled it, we just did it. You know, and I think

Unknown Speaker 19:45

that's the

Perry Maddox 19:45

that's the kind of freeing thing almost as the leader, the executive, you can take more chances. And so while our listening process was going and doing the real deep change, that's gonna matter, I could also make some kind of quick changes and go, we're gonna put three and leaders on our leadership team. Kind of Carry out what your opinion is, I want to let you know that and like, if it doesn't work, it's only me and I'll be fine.

Yeah, level, the salary structures and its own me will be fired, I'll take the heat. And so I think, you know, kind of understanding like what my lane is, as it were, and looking at going, where can I push a button that others might not need to, or might not be able to work and accelerate something that isn't? That's how we've done it, you know, and we've tried to be humble, because we don't know what all we're learning, you know, and

we make mistakes with it all the time. And, you know, and the third one, which is more sensitive, is it's just making the personnel decisions and somebody needs to go. They're not on board with that. And Russ is full of progressive, lovely people. But that doesn't mean everybody's ready, you're right for where we're gonna go next. And, you know, that's the part that we don't talk about too much in public, anybody, but sometimes you got to get people off the bus. And that needs to be done. And I think, again, that's where you can kind of stick your executive neck out a little bit and say, I'll take this risk not not not forced that on your HR teams or your staff to kind of do and I don't know, it seems to be working for us. We're gonna stay humble and hungry on it. But yeah, it's been a good journey. And I'm really proud of our agency for not the progress but the steps we've put in and I'm, I'm excited see where it goes. You know,

Graham Allcott 21:16

I suppose the obvious next question, which maybe you started to answer there with the comment at the end about sometimes you have to stick your neck out and, you know, allow people to get off the bus. I'm just wondering, obviously, obviously, giving up power and privilege can be a difficult thing, you know, even when you have that motivation to do that. So I'm just wondering if you came across instances where maybe it wasn't new, but there was other people that, you know, felt uncomfortable in ceding the power or seeding the space to allow those things to grow into it with it. Were there uncomfortable moments, even though you knew you're doing the right thing?

Perry Maddox 21:52

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the whole thing's uncomfortable, right? Because if you really look at it, you can't you can't just address, you know, injustice as an acute problem. You know, this has not manifested because Russells is a fundamentally racist organisation, is manifested because the world fundamentally systemically racist, right, and therefore, it's in into our world. And, and like even saying that out loud, that's awkward for a lot of people, they don't like it. Are you calling me racist? No, I'm not, you know, and that's not what I'm saying. But like, you know, but you have to hold that silence to not be too easy with them, and let them let them kind of think what they want to think. And you have to be willing to challenge and I don't know, again, I was quite blessed with Ross, this is kind of core DNA. I mean, that's Jim found in organisations challenged the way things were done. We are, you know, we believe strongly in the value of communities and people in their own countries leaving their work, we don't believe in that kind of white guy going overseas to to solve everything we believe in global partnership, right. Partnership is the word they're not kind of down. And, and so I have a lot of a lot of a lot to work with there. But yeah, we've had some tough conversations. And you know, a lot of them have led to kind of, well, maybe this is time to move on. Not not believe this, but it's just personally too hard for you're actually saying your liability now, because you're behind the curve, you know, and now we need to have a more direct conversation. Because, he can't not come with it. We don't we don't demand perfection here at all right? We're all learning Gosh, I mean, I would hate to know what my report card says, you know, what I know here, but the things I've, you also have to put your money where your mouth is and take some chances. And, you know, it's in a way, it's easier in development, I think probably then in business and IT and nonprofits, because we're held to that standard by our founders, we're held to that standard by our communities, we're held to that standard by our staff. And, and, you know, you, you cannot work legitimately, if you're not led by the people you're working for, you know, and, and, and I think in many ways, we can see a strategic value addition that comes out of it. It's not like a nice to have, we're doing this because we need to reduce our carbon footprint, or we're doing this because it's the right thing to do. We're doing this because it adds value to our work, we get better ideas, we get better insight, we get better quality and, and you know, if somebody just can't put all those pieces together, well, you know, let's shake hands. And it's time it's time to part ways. And there's other great organisations out there that you might have a better own with. And, and I, you know, the first couple were hard, they're always going to be hard. But it's interesting, you start to do that you build a muscle memory and you're just reinforcing yourself that this is my gig. You know, what, am I going to get paid more? Because I'm more intelligent, though. It's to do that stuff and to take those chances and, and to put your money where your mouth is and protect the mission. Right?

Graham Allcott 24:40

Absolutely. And what's inspiring to me with that is just, I can just hear the commitment to that just in the way you speak about it and not wanting to shirk those difficult responsibilities as part of that I just think is really inspiring maybe leads me on to thinking about empathy. I I read a really good piece that you wrote on your blog about empathetic leadership. And you were saying that you felt that empathetic leadership was important, but it was also a blessing as well as a curse at the same time.

Perry Maddox 25:12

I'm kind of hard on the slave guy, I always have been. And my job before I really just in my job before rustless was a trainer, I was a full time trainer for Peace Corps volunteers, and so I get him for the 15 week cycles, and then send them out to do the work. And the one things you learn as a trainers is to read the room, right? And you're, you know, it's pretty intimate, you're training six to eight people to do some pretty complex stuff. And, and one of things you you kind of are taught really own is to watch body language, and is someone engaging or not, and how you elicit that without exposing them in the room, you know, they might not be engaging, because they're sick that day, or their mom's not well, they've got something else in their mind, if you go, Hey, Grandma, aren't you talking when you might make them cry? You know, and so that kind of, I got a master class from my boss in Paraguay, and she, she taught me about this kind of element of kind of how do you how do you feel your way through a room? And how do you listen to him, and connect with people. And that's always I mean, that's always kind of been my style, I think my role here is largely to get the right people in the organisation and to make sure that they're supported to be themselves and to thrive. And yeah, we need to make sure we're all moving in a strategic direction, and we need some resourcing, but it's really about setting up teams to help people succeed. And if you're going to help people succeed, you got to understand how they're feeling. Right. And, and, you know, and so, all that was my kind of background, but then we got the pandemic and hit us in the teeth. And not only did we get hit the teeth, but we lost like 30 40% of our income last year, it's gonna come back, but it's gonna come back in a year or two, right, and that was, you know, events, couldn't run corporates, we had seven corporates calling one day to cancel their standing donations, and so we love you, but sorry, because that's the first thing that they needed to do to balance their books, tells you where we stand in the world, but it's okay, you know, we just we had a series of those kind of, you know, kicks in the teeth. And so we had to restructure. And, and again, research is not the end of the world, you know, and we set up from the start, I said to our board, look, we're gonna have to restructure and they said, do two things be quick, and because you know what, I thought that was really, really good. And these are HR, a couple HR pros on and I said, Be quick and be cards. And so that's what I set out to do. And we gave more generous terms for people who had to let go, we did a lot of training with a massive amount of consultation, to kind of reshape the the organic ground based on what our staff thought, you know, and really tried to lead with with my heart, but it wasn't until I kind of snapped and barked at my team. Once in the final meeting, it was like right there. And at the end, I said, like, I just kind of misjudged and gave a little bit of advice that wasn't needed. Put it like that. It wasn't bad advice, but it was the wrong space. And the tone was often, you know, three months later, my annual review, my board chair said, you want to talk about that? You know, and we and we started talking about it. And she said what do you what do you think and, and and it got to the point, she said, you know, you wear your heart on your sleeve, but people don't always want that, you know, or they want the positive side of that, but they don't necessarily want the negative side of your emotion. And I was like, Well, how do you do that without being inauthentic? You know, it's hard for me to kind of turn that on or off. And the kind of the conclusion I came to was like, step back a little bit. You know, and I think what I've done is gone and just gone. I really want to be empathetic, I really want to practice kind of transformational leadership. And so I kind of went to 100 on that dial. And, you know, it was coming the cost of my own well being, because, you know, compassion is like understanding somebody who's in pain or struggling and wanting to help empathy is actively feeling that emotion with them, best understands. And like, he starts to do that with 60 staff who are at risk of losing their job and a pandemic and economic downturn will also you're internalising a whole lot of pain. And yeah, that might have made me a better leader in some ways. But actually, it didn't, you know, I was carrying too much stress. And it was it was self defeating, in a way. And so I think the kind of lesson was like, empathetic leadership, like any leadership tool, you know, in moderation, and use, you know, deploy in different ways. And there's days where we need to be visionary, we need to sell the big thing we need to get out there and put on the suit. And go wow, the UN and there's days where you know, that that leadership skills not needed, and actually what my teams needed me to sit down to help them kind of plough through some problems and understand efficiencies and, and solve and I think we go through those kind of leadership approaches we move on, we adopt them situationally. And the big learning was, I needed to have done that with empathy because I, I just, I just carried a little bit too much. And I came up my personal cost andthat's all right. You know, it's good learning.

Graham Allcott 29:38

Do you think the other thing so your HR people on your board said Be quick and be kind when it came to the restructuring? Do you think sometimes, if, if you're too empathetic, it actually it slows down the decision, right? So it actually it's quite difficult to be quick and be kind in a way because If, if you're fully in the empathy, part of that decision making, then actually you're thinking you're there's more scenarios to play out, you're, you're being more thoughtful about it. And actually, that thought is, is getting in the way of action. Do you think that's maybe the other downside to being too empathetic as a leader?

Perry Maddox 30:20

It's definitely out there. And I've read a lot of research on that, or a lot of thinking. And I see some of my teams actually who I've got some really strong empathetic leaders and they, they can be, they can be slow to make these hard decisions, or they can kind of avoid them because of the personal impact that the fallout. I mean, the funny thing, in my case was, my boss just sat down She goes, the first thing people love that you're super decisive, you moved on this way quickly. And I did, because it was just clear and see the tea leaves and my wife, and I've been kind of like, following the COVID News, since that ship was stuck off of, I can't remember Japan or South Korea, that kind of cruise ship. And we're like, this is really bad. And we're kind of like conspiracy theorists. So I kind of already got to the point where this pandemics gonna be multiple years, it's gonna be way worse. Nobody wants to admit and, and in a funny way, it allowed me to be really decisive in the process. So they will be really quick but but the promise is the kind of emotional collateral that I was accruing the whole way through, like to know the feelings and still be able to kind of like almost kind of cut the brain off again, and still get a crack on with this restructure because it's got to be done. It's got to be done for the mission, it's got to be done for young people. It's not, you know, it's just got to happen. So let's just do it, you know, I was able to do that. But I think even the effort of choosing to do that meant that the cost of the cost accruing got even more, whereas perhaps other people get called on empathetic leadership earlier, upstream and are slower, I just ploughed through the decision, which was fine. But it came back at me in the end. So, I think different personalities get caught different ways. I mean, I still stand by I mean, I think if you're going to err, I mean, come on, and err on the side of being kind to your people err on the side of caring about their feelings, you know, nine times out of 10 that's gonna get you happier staff, more productivity, better impact. And, you know, one, one times out of 10, and you need to step back and look for the traps, whatever they might be.

Graham Allcott 32:09

Yeah, it's like salt, salted caramel, right? I know, the sweetness, but occasionally, that little bit of salt to a little bit of bite to make decisions and do stuff.

Perry Maddox 32:20

Yeah. Because me know, is one of the things that I go. It's like, the first guy ever had to fire us to jump around age is gonna, like 10 years ago, I had to let a guy God, he just was totally wrong for the job. And, and he came on the meeting, he was like, so what? Nina Rosa fired him, because I did such a terrible job of communicating because I was 2009. And I felt so bad about it. And it was like, right, okay, you know, and you go, I have a job here. And I my job is, is the mission. And it doesn't matter how uncomfortable I am, I've got to serve young people. And you also what I learned in that one is, you don't help anybody who's underperforming or struggling or in the wrong role, by keeping them by being nice. Now, most of time, you can fix it, you can help somebody grow, but if somebody's just in the wrong place, or if they're in the right place, but you simply don't have the money to keep them anymore. Like kind of mincing words and dancing around that you can you can express love and kindness and care for those people. But you've got to do what you got to do for the for the for the business and the bottom line. So that in our case you can you serve people, I don't know, I don't know if that's like kind of a psychopathic tendency to be able to kind of box that off and just go, I'm going to focus on the thing here and try to be as nice as I can be along the way. But you just got to do it. Right. And I think that I think no drawing it out is one of the cruellest things, that that was what I really liked from the board is, you know, be quick and I was like, wow, you know, because if we, if we are indecisive here, well, everyone knows that they're not done. Everyone that's definitely was knows that we are in financial trouble. And what are they going to do? And we're going to make them wait for three months rather than one. That's I mean, that's the height of cruelty and sensitivity and, and so if you see this is a really interesting kind of mix, um, and understanding that sometimes the kindest thing you can do might feel a little bit cruel but I definitely took my eye off self care and all that and I ended up kind of harming others as a result that was that was a big learning too.

Graham Allcott 34:12

Yeah, I mean that that thing about you know, be quick and be kind. I'd imagine having been in some similar places both in my time working in charities and then also running my own business. That advice is like it's what you don't want to hear as the CEO but it's also what you need to hear is like Oh shit, it's gonna be one of those those periods and stuff. Coming back to that you know that that thing about you know, you're saying like I'm boxing it off. And is that like a psychopathic thing? Is that unkind? I don't think so. And Bernie Browns got a lovely phrase, which is clear is kind of unclear is unkind. And I think there's a, there's a real kindness to that. That clarity of saying, look, this is this is where we're at. This is why it doesn't fit. This is what I have. Money, like whatever the situation is, you know, like you said before that is, that is what you're paying the extra money to do, right as CEO is to take on board, you know those difficult decisions and make the right calls and be decisive. Yeah. Yeah. I like that clarity is coming. That's very true. Yeah, clear is kind and unclear is unkind. And, yeah, let's, let's talk a little bit about productivity and, and work life balance, and very beyond busy topics. So you are usually based in London, you're now for a little while based in the US, predominantly because of COVID. And, obviously, your leaders having expanded the leadership team of the organisation to be less London centric, and now based all around the world, that must give you a bit of a problem in terms of times is right, just the practicalities of that. So tell us more about what what it's like to lead a leadership team who ostensibly can't get together in the same room, and are all working in presumably different time zones at different times of the day?

Perry Maddox 36:08

Well, I'm reminded another piece of advice I got from a board member ages ago, he, we were talking about distributing leadership and he had made all of his money in offshore, he had made a bunch of money and kind of offshoring some part of the financial services model and work with people in different countries to deliver that service at a lower cost. And, and we're just talking about this as we were starting to distribute leadership, and he said, Look, never relocate a team, relocate around a person, don't relocate your finance function, relocate your finance director, because you trust that person. And he's gonna and it was brutally, it was really, it was really good. Because normally with Organa grammes, you go, well, let's build the right structure. And, and let's be clean, and then we'll put the right people that and let's be objective, and actually you saying no, I mean, if you've got a leader that you trust that you know, will put three years into this, you know, relocation project, build around them and, and work that relationship as the key glue, because that's really what's going to matter. And that was, like years ago, and that stuck with me. And I, that's kind of how we started here, right? We've got a couple new leaders on that. But actually, it's I took what was the best leadership team I've ever had, and, and kind of chose the next structure based on that. I mean, if someone's got forest loss, don't get me wrong. You know, what we the way we lead across Russell's is what we call a mobile headquarters. So we don't believe our London team is our headquarters. It's just a support office plays certain functions. We bring together all of our global directors once a year for the conference. And it's it's where we make all decisions and full consensus. So I'm not the CEO, I don't direct what happens wrestlers, I do that in partnership with all my directors. And so we kind of had some DNA stuff that was already going in our favour to be just to, but in the day, I mean, it's just I've gotten brutal about scheduling and and the calendar is my best friend, and like, I fundamentally leave our resources, our most constrained asset. And so how do you use time as our most constrained asset? How do you use that resource. And so, I mean, for me, it kind of works. I'm a morning guy, so I get up early, and then have some calls at six and seven to catch the ball in India. And then I kind of got to Asia, Europe, and by the time they're finished, it's like, it's, it's like noon, right. And all of a sudden, I've got the rest of the afternoon to do whatever I want. And in a way, it's kind of mechanically like hived off that kind of doing space, you know, 60% of time I get those afternoons to do what I need to do, and I'm actually more productive than ever. Whereas, you know, when I was based in London, in the same time, as with all of our Africa teams, and pretty close to Asia teams, you know, there was a lot more questions and a lot more kind of time spent on with the team. And now it's just more focused, like, I just stretched it out, you know, this is, this is your slot, this is what I'm available, I will always be available. If you need help, by all means, let me know. But if not, I'm going to trust you, because I know you're high quality later crack on, let's talk about outcomes, I'm going to trust you on all their outputs, you do the work, let's talk about the why. And, and, and yeah, and and then we check in and do that. And it's been a great exercise and trust. Now we're just on boarded three new leaders into the team, and I don't know them as well personally. And so like step one is get to know and figure out the relationship and give them that kind of comfort that they would have had from by going for a cup of coffee, or beer after work, whatever it might be, and just generate that. But it's really effective for me is I basically have like carved out my day where I've got productivity like built in to create, as opposed to just service and, and then what we do and then, but are all global meetings. Now we can't do it, you know, all together. So what we ended up doing is cutting it down. And instead of having like a two week in person set pace, where we do everything we're doing for short meetings a week, a year, you know, and so we're getting all those directors together for a couple days. But they're not even whole days. They're like four hour slots, so that our US East Coast, people can get up and join at 7am, India, Nepal, it's not too late to their night. And so we're just doing less and you know, giving people permission to do less, I think is like my key job. You can dial that back, it's okay. And let me kind of do that conducting. And so what we found is we've covered just as much ground. Of course we did. Of course, if you've got if you feel the brief goes nowhere.

Graham Allcott 40:17

So do you feel like is is part of you keen to not move back to London so that you preserve this nice, you know, sort of us timezone having the afternoons to yourself kind of time like that must be a temptation there.

Perry Maddox 40:29

Definitely. Definitely, definitely. I mean, what I used to do in London was beforehand, I, I had one working on diagnosis, like my Thursday work at home day, and I just, I mean, I love the Thursday work on but because it's like it's complete mental manipulation. I'm like, Look, I've got a three day week and then I get to work at home, which is Yeah, I don't have to commute. I'm gonna have like, you know, yeah, and then it's Friday. And like, all my other team got it as a Wednesday we're gonna home I'm like, No, no, no, y'all you. Okay, so I always had that right, and still have that. But what I also put my calendars I just put it down one day, I was like, let me work Wednesdays. And it my calendar just reads I will not take a meeting on Wednesday. And now I'll take a meeting during the day if you need help if you need call if there's emergency or for you know, for Thunder wants to meet, of course. Right. But, uh, internal normal meetings, I've just said no. Yeah, what was just went to those into kind of Monday, Tuesday, Friday. And like, if there's not a space, let's ask a question about watch a lot of space, I should be able to have a day where I, I don't meet people, because you need where's my value addition?

You know, you

need me kind of in, you know, Warren Buffett, what's his deal he like, basically reads and thinks all the time and good for you or, you know, but like, for those of us who are kind of in it a little bit more like just carving out that one day, like if I'm not thinking if I'm not kind of scribbling out stuff for my kids pens on paper, and, and kind of thinking about where we're going, or at least just servicing my inbox, sometimes does what I do you know what I mean? That's okay to keep the grass down, and I'm not doing my job. So, yeah, I don't know, I think we could probably overcome it without geography. But geography is a lovely little boost to give you early.

Graham Allcott 42:01

So I feel like everybody needs to be in a warren buffett mindset at least one day a week. So it feels like you're, you're getting the balance right with that. The other thing I was just going to ask about, you know, managing people across time zones, and countries and everything else. So you mentioned there, right? You've got new leaders, and it's all about getting to know them. And of course, you can't go for a beer, you don't have the water cooler, you can't take them for lunch, you know, have you found Have you found other other ways other than just being talking on a zoom call in order to get to know people? Are there other things that people can try if they're sort of in that kind of leadership working from home kind of made right now? Yeah,

Perry Maddox 42:44

I mean, we ran a full retreat online, and it works. You know, I didn't work as well as you know, we didn't have the evenings together, where we go, like, share ideas, but we ran one of our setpiece retreats we do every year, online at the haidakhan of pandemic misery in the UK. We're Morales totally bottomed out and, and, you know, we just did some little cheesy stuff, but that's okay. Sometimes, you know, just the little triggers. I said, Look, bring something to make your desk feel different, right, or set a different party house or, and so every day, I'd be like, here's my like, diffuser, and I'd like pull up my little like essential oil diffuser. And I'd be like, today I'm doing rosemary and thyme, and you know, whatever. And the reason I'm doing that is because it makes me feel happy and balanced. And it's almost like over the top stick. right button. Yeah, but but what we were doing is just kind of, you know, just showing the team and talking to my team and going so what are you doing, and then they'd like, do something fun and, and we closed out that retreat with like drawing a house, when I was looking to thank you for welcoming us into your house, you know, we've just got a treat in your home. And that's invasive, right? That's massively invasive and endless, then it was all linked to where we're going to go. And so it was kind of a guided kind of problem. We all drew houses. And we ended that way. And I mean, everybody left and the blood pressure went down. And we had to get thinking, and I think, you know, it was a little bit of expert, but we learned that we could do it. Right. And so I think carving unintentional space online is great, obviously turn the cameras off, you know, introverts and people who don't want to get on their face all day long struggle with cameras, and, and so giving people time to be off has been helpful. But also just kind of, I mean, one of the other areas I don't do as much now is is like Instagram, I mean, my my Instagram now is mainly about my blog, and kind of coaching stuff, and it's just kind of like, you know, you know, it's not like my personal life, but it used to be all my personal life. And the point was to kind of connect and get to know people and all of a sudden I've got volunteers and staff who I'm not gonna meet because we're running up to 8000 volunteers a year. I'm not gonna meet all those folks. But if they know where to find me and they know what I'm about and they can kind of catch my voice on the on a little clearer there. My life's about like that, that that's valid. You know, it doesn't replace everything and all the person but I, again, I think one of the things, I think if you choose to worry about it, you'll probably get it right. If you don't ask the question, you're gonna be in trouble. You know, if you just go, how do I connect with my new team member? You've already got it, you know? And if you can answer that in probably the wrong role, right?

Graham Allcott 45:14

And you said that about Instagram that it used to be about your personal stuff. And then now it's much more about your blog and stuff. Do you think that was a conscious or even a subconscious thing to offer a bit less of you like as a, as a CEO? Do you think that's that's kind of shifted your thinking a bit?

Perry Maddox 45:30

Not so much? Not so much. I'm actually going to kind of start to work more me back in America, that content goes better. But no, it was more just like I started a blog last year, and I don't know anything about it, right. And then I have always used Instagram, just like for friends and that kind of stuff. And I've kind of I'm enjoying learning how the space works. I'm enjoying, you know, trying to add a bit of value above and beyond. I mean, it was really funny, everybody, Russell thought I was quitting. But I lost the blog and all my sector colleagues thought I'm starting a consultancy. And I was like, genuinely friends, I'm like, I'm just trying to share, I'm just trying to share, I've got tonnes of privilege in my life, I'm lucky to be where I am. And that's, you know, by background, and that's how I was educated. I'm lucky, right? And so like, I'm just trying to give away free leadership lessons as I go, and you get to see people going, Okay, you know, okay, they're like, Oh, he's real. He's not actually trying to sell me anything. And I've enjoyed doing that. But I've definitely learned why, you know, I've made quite a few mistakes, social media and that kind of stuff. So it's more of an evolution. And actually, what I'm finding now is I probably went too far to the content and not enough of the community people. And so I'm trying to get back to that on social media and decisions that allow it's obvious, right? Because that's not how you lead. In real life. You don't lead the content, you lead the community relationships, and getting the social media and there's tendencies to push all the stuff out there. But actually, people aren't coming from my content. They're coming because they trust me, hopefully. Right? Or at least they are they totally distrust me and one argue, which is good, too, right? But like, I think so it's more of an evolution.

Graham Allcott 46:58

Can we just Can we just talk about the mistake? So you said you made some mistakes on social media on the way?

Perry Maddox 47:03

Yeah, well, I just like, it's all self education, right. And I went out and bought a box, like on a handles that are like, you know, how to grow your Instagram and how to do. I've kind of given up on Twitter, I share on Twitter, but that's, it doesn't make me happy. And I think

Graham Allcott 47:20

I didn't spend any time on Twitter anymore.

Perry Maddox 47:24

I don't know just people shouting angrily into a box. And so I've kind of enjoyed Instagram. And LinkedIn, of course, and, and I think what the big mistake was just not understanding that it is social media. Right. And, you know, he said out loud, and everybody says it right. But I, I started to fall kind of handles on there. This is how to do great posts. And so here, I was doing like carousel posts like these these guys. And actually, like, that's not what my audience wanted. They don't want me like hammering like, you know, kind of clickbait titles, like five ways to build your leadership. That's what I was doing. And like, it's just like, that's not who you are me, you know what I mean, you're a guy like this. And I think trying to come back and define the kind of real voice and not just to do kind of what the what you're supposed to do, but to kind of take that wisdom, and go cool. That's a good way to build engagement. I'll file that away. But let me make sure I do it in a way that's true to me. I think that's the mistake. And the other mistake that I've made is trying to prioritise too many channels at once. And I've been a couple there's been a couple times where I've, like really tried to work on Instagram, the quality the blogs dropped, and it's like, no, what are you doing this for, you're doing this because of the blog, that's your like heart soul, that's what you're trying to share. Instagram is a means by which to distribute or to engage. And so that's been a good learning too. And, you know, I try not trying to do it, so it doesn't kind of take over your life, and you still switch off and go see the kids and it gets a bit talking my wife and she's like, you know, social media is a it's a rabbit hole, you know, you want to do this really, really well. You can keep doing it to the degree and you can do this and you can, you can start to do more stories, and you can do more reels, and you do more posts, and all the sudden you're just like, I'm not enough The other thing. You know what I mean? Like, where's the day? Sure,

Graham Allcott 49:02

for sure. And they'll say like, you know, content is a thing that you can sort of control how much content you put out. But community is is infinite. Right? So that's the rabbit hole too, is that you get sucked into community. And then yeah, I really relate to that whole thing about trying to deal with your own voice. And I struggled with that myself a lot for years and years. And then I ended up just having a very similar thought process to what you just described there. Just thinking, How can I make this okay for me, right. And so, there's lots of stuff I don't like I don't really like selfies. I don't really like this whole sort of, you know, portrayed thing that people do where it's like them staring from a funny angle into the distance or whatever. And it's like, you know, just it just feels really cringy and silly to me, but it's like, yeah, I'll put out the things that I want to say and I'll do it my way. So I ended up writing this blog post called a marketing manifesto for my work and just once I set the rules out for what I was cutting, For with and what what was a no go for me like selfies and you know, and all those things and quoting myself was another thing like, you know, the quote posts, where it's like, you know, people write you know at it and they're usually something really sort of banal as well, right. It's like, you know, in order to move forward, you have to start by moving forward or something. And then it's just got like their name underneath. So I was like, I just, I just don't want to do that. So I just had the rules that I will quote you, right. So there'll be, I'll pick out some things that you said in this interview and quote you on my Instagram, but I would never quote me. Like, I just think that's just like, arrogant. And so I figured out the rules, and that it was a carryover to that. We've got a few more minutes. And at the beginning, you said you've got a Did you call it a diaper centre? behind you? Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm trying to be transatlantic. I've got my we've got the nappy changing diaper changing table changing station? Yeah.

Perry Maddox 51:00

So it's good for big meetings, you know, when you're in a meeting, and the kind of the baby rolls in there and gets changed in the background? And I'm like, well, let's Yeah, let's test let's see what you're all about.

Graham Allcott 51:09

So, um, but obviously, you know, doing a CEO role across timezones, you know, what, while also, you know, having a baby in the family, too, so, just tell us your reflections on work life balance? And how do you make it all fit together,

Perry Maddox 51:26

I basically prioritise two things in my life, family and work. It's not to say the other stuff goes, but that I put that first and, you know, kids have a way of forcing get off on time, you know, and, well, not even on time, I think the last year, it was just a massive exercise for everybody. And like, not just accepting the kids coming in the screen and interruptions, but accepting that we are real people and that, like, my, my business director is gonna be a business director. But sometimes she's she's a mom. And like, sometimes those things interact and, and, and learning how to how to, you know, help her go be mom first. So you can come back and be business director, and I think those kind of conversations are really healthy. And it's been so much fun to see that. I think a lot of organisations over the last year a little bit more acceptance of what's going on in the background. I mean, but for me, like, yeah, we just were my wife and I, she's in the same boat. She's working globally as well. And, and, and she's a CEO for an exciting organisation doing great work with farmers and, and so we, you know, we, we don't chop shop very much, we chat kids and go cool, who's gonna pick up who's gonna drop off and you just schedule it? You know what I mean? And I think in a way, like children are excellent, because they just force you to log off. You know, they, yeah, they come on. And and yeah, of course, I have idle thoughts. But of course, I think about work. Usually, it's the things I'm excited about. While you know, I'm around but, but really, it's kind of really Zim because you still get very physical really quick and either with crayons are more likely than not, I'm just chasing the one year old around and trying to catch him. And that kind of physicality. Well, it's replacing the gym. You know, but But the other thing I've done is, I've just stopped a lot of stuff. And I've given myself permission to do mainly these two things for a couple years. I mean, we've got a five year old, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, right, and I can see a little bit more balanced. And I might be able to have hobbies again, and, you know, and that kind of stuff. But we've got a one year old, and you know, it's just that we have a kid that young, you just you got to give yourself permission not to do at all. And I mean, what I dropped was, I mean, I've just basically my Xbox is collecting dust. Why cuz that was not a productive hobby for me, right? I'd sit down to play, but I played it later, but 11 months, you know, and that was good. But it's like, I can live without that I quit my softball team in London. I mean, it was a bummer. I love the softball team. But like, I was like, I can't go half day Saturday, and practice and a Thursday night and play and probably be a little bit hungover on a Friday morning. And I just can't do that anymore. That's like

the net drain on my life is that's not worth it. And I think just kind of recognising life cycles and going, I'm in a stage here where my priorities are obviously my children are our children, our family, but just to go, that'll come back that that rich, that rich life of kind of optional activities, I don't come back. And if it doesn't, I'm really happy where I am. In the meantime, you know, and I, I think doing that and just kind of trying to enjoy the time and give yourself permission when it doesn't work. You know, I you know, I'm lucky to work for a very flexible employer, but the kids get sick all the time. And you just go well, I got to down tools, and I'll be backing up with those hours and somewhere else. I mean, early in the pandemic, what I said to the team is I don't care what your hours are. I don't you know, like just don't even don't even bother. I care about the outcomes. And if you're struggling to get to that level and let me know. But you you're skilled people work you you know, these people are recording their staff at all man is ridiculous. You know, nobody performs well like that. So I think trying to kind of listen to what I'm telling my teams and practice a little bit of myself and give myself permission just to go with the flow and you know, the ball every day and it is one of those things. It's like you do it and then you got to stop at some point to go how's it working and And what's working and what's not in turn that kind of learning loop. And I do that with my wife, we go, are we doing and we get back to work. And the fun thing is when you're at work, you're in work, you know, and then you sit down. And yes, I'm going to be here, and I'm going to be properly here for X amount of time. And I mean, because you can't run long, you have to be more efficient within the day. And that was, that was one of the things I think, you know, it's really interesting when people say, Well, I might have to work on a Saturday, I think that messes up the whole week. I don't believe in working on the weekends, because I think give yourself that much time. I think you need a weekend to recharge. And I think you know, I might have to work late tonight. I'm like, No, why do you say gonna finish at six? Let's see what happens. Right? You might be way more ruthless during the day. And so I think it's kind of like ruthlessness and compassion.

Graham Allcott 55:43

Yeah, that's it. That's just what I was thinking there is that there's this, this is really nice mix in your approach, which is trust on the one hand, and then real decisiveness on the other. And I just think that's a very inspiring approach to leadership. And it's also, I think, just fundamental to work life balance, like, you've just got to be really clear about what's in and what's out, you know, there is a time and then I just think that makes makes so much sense. And we're pretty much at the hour mark. So I'd love people to connect with you and find out more about Russell's development and read some of your blog. So do you want to just as we finish, just let people know where they can find you and just point people to, to what you want to point them towards?

Perry Maddox 56:30

Oh, we'd love to Well, I mean, look, if you want to check out restless, please check out wrestles development.org. That's our website. But we've got a great blog, we are restless. So check that one out. That's young leaders around the world. And my stuff is all under the banner of just open leaders. So it's just open leaders calm. Check it out. There's a blog there and I'm paramedics on all the platforms, so you can hunt me down. I'm the paramedics with a beard. And yeah, you know, please, please do reach out on LinkedIn and on Insta, because I'd love to be as helpful as against anybody who's listening.

Graham Allcott 57:02

Perry, it's been amazing having you on Beyond Busy. And we'll put all the links to all that stuff in the show notes as well. So people can connect with you that way get to be on busy.com. But thanks for hanging out today.

Perry Maddox 57:12

Oh, thanks, Graham. I mean, it's such a pleasure really enjoyed it.

Graham Allcott 57:16

So there you go, paramedics. And as we said, during the conversation, I have my own experiences of volunteering, travelling away with restless development as it is now an sp w as it was then just want to give a shout out to all the people who I've met through my time in Uganda and with SP w the spew crew as we often refer to ourselves. And it's such a such a talented and diverse group of people who you know, honestly just based in different continents around the world and, you know, people who I would never have met if it wasn't for the work of wrestlers development. So just want to give a huge shout out to where you will know who you are. But to all those people that I've met through that incredible organisation. And yeah, it's honestly one of those experiences as well, where I look back on what that stuff teaches you, right? So just going out to another country just being kind of thrown into the deep end in many ways to just make stuff happen and get stuff done. And yeah, it really was a very fundamental part of my own journey and kind of figuring out what I wanted to do my career who I was as a person, as a leader, and all that stuff. So shout out to everybody working with wrestlers, development and everything that they do.

Also, thanks to Pavel and to Emilie for your help with bringing all this together as always, and we are sponsored by Think Troductive so head to thinkproductive.com if you want to help us to help you, we can come in and help your team to do their best work and make space for what matters. And if you want to find out more just head to think productive calm. And you can also just drop me a line it's Graham at think productive dot code at UK we'd love to answer your questions about what it is to think productive does. And also just if there's anything else that you want to share with me if you've got potential guests that you have in mind for this show, or anything else you want to share about the podcast, just drop me an email I just I love getting emails from from readers of the book and listen to the podcast. So just Graham at think productive dot code at UK if you want to drop me an email. And if you're not signed up to rev up for the week, which is my weekly email we just passed 1000 subscribers, very excited about that. So if you just go to www.grahamallcott.com/links, you can join the 1000 plus people who every Sunday you get an email from me and in that email is one productive or positive idea for the week ahead. And it's a pleasure to do I've really enjoyed doing over the last year and a half or so and Not least, because as well as having a kind of regular practice and a regular writing deadline, it's really helped me to connect with lots of the listeners to this podcast and lots of people who are reading my stuff on a regular basis. So if that sounds like fun, just head to grow more core.com forward slash links. It's not spammy. I don't sell your email address, like none of that rubbish stuff. It's just a once a week email that just keeps you informed of what I'm doing and what I'm thinking. And the important thing, my only criteria every week is that it is helpful. So if you want to be part of that, Graham allcott.com for slash links, we're gonna be back in another week with another episode. Oh, yeah. One other thing, just thank you if you bought how to fix meetings, my book with Haley watts. Yeah, we've just had a really great time with that over the last few weeks, where people just giving us some really nice feedback and Amazon reviews coming in and it's sold pretty well. So we're really happy with that. If you haven't bought it. It's called How to fix meetings. And if you have bought it, thank you really appreciate it and keep the feedback coming in.

See you next week. Take care. Bye for now.