Hello everyone. Today I am joined by someone who knows all about making things happen when you are not the one holding all the strings.

Ed Parker is products innovation manager at Christian Skin’s Poverty Cap, where he’s leading the design of services that help people not only get out of debt, but build lasting financial resilience. He’s worked everywhere from Tanzania to the UK on digital transformation projects, and his focus is always on people, not just problems to solve.

Ed is also a keen distance runner and we’re talking ultra marathons, which even the idea of makes me feel very, very sick. He runs a local chapter of a running club where craft beer meets running shoes. Ed is a good friend of mine with whom I have worked for about 10 years in various capacities.

He was the very first person I managed back in 2009 when I was just turning 23. He was my practice direct report, and we worked together raising money for CAP through sponsored events. Then we trained hundreds of people, thousands probably to run a money course for their churches and local communities.

Ed and I worked really well together and we have been looking for a way to work together again, and having him on this podcast seemed like a great step. We usually communicate business ideas through South Pack references, so we’re going to try and not let that take over today. But I wanted to bring Ed on because so often productivity advice is about your personal habits.

But what about when your productivity depends on others, on colleagues, on specialists, teams that you don’t directly manage? How do you stay effective, get results, and keep your sanity in that kind of environment? And that is what hopefully we’re gonna get into today

okay, ed, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be with you today. Great. Before we dive into productivity, can you just tell us a little bit about what your role at CAP looks like day to day? Yeah, so as you said in the intro, I work in the product space, which means on a day-to-day basis, my job looks like working with our end users, our customers, and trying to work out how we can solve their problems.

So often that looks like, running some workshops kind of process mapping out where. Problems and pain points are, and trying to work out where solutions might be. And so some of that will look like technology changes and trying to work out the sort of the digital transformation journey that we need to go on.

Some of it will look at watching the wind and trying to work out what’s coming next in terms of the innovations in technology. But a big part of that. We’ll be thinking about things like, impact and evaluation frameworks, theory of change, and how actually we deliver the overall outcomes and benefits for the people that we’re working with.

So on a day-to-day basis, I’m doing a lot of that stuff, but I’m also line managing a team of product owners who are doing the day-to-day work in this space. Fantastic. I understand about 10% of that, but I’m sure the listeners who are much more intelligent than me understand more about that. But it sounds very complicated.

Sounds like, sounds like there’s a lot going on. And you’ve worked in lots of different contexts, like I’ve mentioned a couple of things that we’ve done together from sponsored events and the cap money stuff, and now you’ve done all sorts of different stuff since I left Cap back in 2018. And how has working in all these different contexts shaped how you think about what productivity actually is?

That’s a great question. Probably the number one thing that I’d say that has shaped my understanding of what productivity looks like is actually thinking about productivity from the perspective of outcomes as opposed to outputs. My first line manager at Cap taught me a lot about that.

One of the things that stuck with me throughout that process was as a line manager, one of the things I saw jazz seeking to do throughout that process was actually really be focused on. The outcomes of the team rather than the things that she output.

And so actually some of the things that perhaps might more naturally sit on her list of things to do, she started to empower me and the other team members around me and to kind of take those on. And it kind of created space for her to become even more focused on the overall. Outcomes of the team and the impact that we were going after.

And so for me, I think the thing that’s, been that sort of lightning rod point or the grounding thing for me throughout in productivity is, not viewing it from the perspective of like, what am I doing? But what am I trying to achieve and what are the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve

so that real kind of focusing in on the kind of clarity, the alignment points, and ultimately trying to remove those points of grit or friction, in any kind of process changes in order to get to that stuff. As I’ve worked through those different roles, whether that be in direct sales roles.

To the sort of events management roles to products and service design type stuff is like, where are those pain points? Where are those frictions? How do we remove those? And ultimately deliver that clarity towards the mission or the outcomes that we’re going for overall. I love what you said there about outcomes, not output.

Because I remember if we cast our minds back to 2012 and there’s eight of us, I think running the cat money team. Yep. Sounds about right. And we’re all kids. We’re all in our twenties, but we’re managing a massive budget. We are training hundreds of adults, grownups to run this money management course, which is affecting their communities.

We are growing at an exponential rate. But I just remember the fun. I remember that we were quite relaxed because we worked hard but not pushed ourselves constantly because we were focused on the important things. Just getting the new people involved, training up the new money coaches, and effectively getting the courses out there.

And we really focused on that. But I just remember just having so much fun. Yeah. Because it was really releasing, just focusing on. Outcome, not output. Yeah. And, and that, that, I guess it comes from that alignment and clarity that we kinda had, we knew what the big strategic shifts that we needed to make were, and actually then the deliverables kind of just followed because we’re going after the right things.

If you’re going after the wrong things, then it feels like you’re fighting tooth and nail just to get the basics done on a day-to-day basis, they do just feel like hard work in those scenarios, but when everyone’s going after the same thing and we’re all going after the kind of big strategic shifts that we needed to make, whether that be getting the product into new markets or actually kind of getting that kind of growth out there.

So we’re actually kind of working with, new people in new spaces and reaching more people like. At those different points, everything else just kind of clicked because we were all going after the same stuff. And so yeah, we could have the fun in and around it all. That kind of, that is the sort of glue of, of how you deliver really good change, isn’t it?

Mm-hmm. You know, trust and relationships are critical in kind of achieving good outputs and good outcomes overall. I see this so often where people go wrong with productivity because they don’t start with that. What are the priorities? What are the outcomes we’re going for? What’s my North star?

Where am I going? Whatever you want to call it. People will just go, I need to get that prioritization. Then I say, well, what’s your goal? And they don’t know. How can you know what to prioritize if you don’t know what direction you want to walk in? And that’s what we were like as a team. We were the arrow that was just really, really focused.

Goals and people, you know, that’s, that’s probably hear me say those things a few times over the next however long we chat for, but like, what, what are we going after and do we have the relationships to make those things happen?

Mm-hmm. Because, you know, that’s the kind of critical thing is it’s not necessarily about like. The, the goal, you know, what’s the right goal or anything like, is having a goal and who you get to do that thing with and can you trust those people and, you know, make sure they’re, you know, they’re in their space, you are in your space and, and kind of touch on the right stuff.

And so that for me is, you know, how, how productivity should look. Let’s have a goal, let’s go after it and let’s make sure that we are working well together in order to make that stuff happen. Simple, isn’t it really? It’s not complicated.

Not at all. No. Not nuanced or have their own sort of view of the world or, or those kinds of things, but no, it takes work. But that is. That’s the fun of it All right? Mm-hmm. So now you told me that you work in a matrix team, and for those of us, not me, of course, a hundred percent. I know what you mean, a hun.

Yeah, a hundred percent I do. But for other people who do not have the slightest clue what working in a matrix team means, please explain it for me. Yeah, so I guess there’s, a simple way of, explaining what a matrix team is, is that, it’s where the people who are responsible for doing the work you’re trying to do, they don’t report to you.

They report to someone else. And so that means that there’s a whole sort of management layer or structure that’s involved and could be prioritizing their work in perhaps a different way or kind of focused on that. And so actually as a product team, I have no ability. To deliver anything, from my team.

We are a strategy setting, thought leadership, group of people. We cannot write a single line of code for any of our IT systems. We cannot analyze any of the research or information that comes back to us. We can’t, deliver anything fundamentally. And so that’s where a matrix team comes in, is that the individuals who are responsible for writing the line of code, the people who are responsible for the customer insight and evaluation frameworks, they sit elsewhere.

And so in those scenarios, everything we have to deliver. It comes through making sure that actually we’ve got that strategic alignment, the influence and the relationships in order to make some of that stuff happen. And so, um, you know, you can experience that in small businesses as well. And that might be where you are paying an external contractor or someone like that to perhaps.

Deliver your social media strategy for you or or web developer who’s working on your website so you can experience some of that stuff. Although there is the slight nuance there that you’ve got the commercial relationship that’s set up. And so the difference probably where it’s all in-house in a larger organization is that you don’t quite have that same,

contracts that you can lean back on and go, right, well you said you were gonna do X and you haven’t delivered X. So let’s talk about that. You’ve got this sort of much more management by influence kind of approach to all. Sounds delightful. Because people are great, like we just said, and there’s no complications at all.

People are simple and easy. Definitely. Yeah. Hundred percent. So in this matrix team, your outputs depend on other people. Yep. So how do you personally define productivity when you are not the one producing the final thing? Yeah, I think that’s, that it does come back to what I was saying earlier, that sort of on a personal level defining productivity for me looks like the enabling outputs, outcomes, sorry, rather than the kind of focusing on the things that I can output.

And so, you know, that is a very intentional strategy of not doing everything myself. It is an intentional strategy on creating clarity, alignment, removing friction, and really being focused on developing those sort of the influence skills, in myself. So that, you know, we are really making sure that that kind of flow through the process works really well, and that we’re removing those pain points, across the whole thing.

And so success, for me looks like flow. And my attention is drawn towards the handover points. The points where, you know, if you kind of put it in the relay analogy where you could hand over the baton and it could get dropped or missed, or perhaps take slightly longer than it should do to do all of that kind of stuff.

’cause that’s where the delays come, that’s where the kind of pain points come. And so there’s sort of, what does productivity look like? It looks like good flow, good handover, and it looks like people. Being confident in the roles that they have, that they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and that they’re not doing more than they should be doing.

Mm-hmm. That must be a bit frustrating sometimes though, with so much out of your control. Yeah, I mean, I think probably the whole reason we ended up having this conversation was ’cause I, I found myself at different points kind of frustrated where. I haven’t been able to achieve the level of alignment that perhaps I, I would’ve been hoping for.

And that’s kind of why I come back to the whole people thing being so vital in this process is you can have the best goals, you can have the right goals, you can have the most amazing goals, out there. And if people don’t live by them, you write them down and you stick ’em in a drawer or someone else sticks them in a drawer.

It doesn’t matter. And it’s like, I’m not a golfer, but someone described it once as having a really good pullback on your golf swing, but then never actually striking the ball and having that follow through. You can put that in a tennis analogy or a football analogy or any kind of sporting analogy.

At the end of the day, you can do all of the pulling back really well, but actually then following through, that’s where the kind of the skill and the craft comes in. Because yeah, I. I’ve definitely been frustrated. I’ve been frustrated this year. I’ve been frustrated last year and I’ll probably be frustrated next year.

And the frustration will be my own as well, because it’ll be that I haven’t achieved the level of alignment between me and my peers and the people around me to kind of deliver some of that stuff. And so that’s why I’m really focused on the people element and the relationship side of this stuff.

I bet you have to really work on your boundaries as well, about what’s your responsibility, what isn’t. Not let yourself get stressed and help up in the things that are at, not in your remit. Yeah, I definitely, you know, have to sit on my hands from time to time. Not be that guy that goes out and kind of just tries to, tries to solve everything.

Right. I’ve got a massive like, curiosity mindset. I’m like, how did that work? You know, like that’s the question that’s always floating around. It’s like, what made that thing work? And I’ll go off and I’ll kinda like research this whole thing. And I went a deep dive rabbit war on the other day on AI search engines and how that’s changing websites, absolutely nothing to do with my job at all.

And at the end of this whole process, I had to be like. Cool. I’m just gonna have to put all of that into the parking lot right now because that’s not my job to kind of do anything about, and I’d start thinking about then, well, how do I influence the conversation, somewhere else to kind of surface this knowledge and this deep dive that I’ve just done.

I personally find there’s this kind of desire to satisfy the curiosity mindset that I have. Like how did that thing work? But then not go ahead and kind of like publish those findings or say, Hey guys, this is the thing we gotta do. It’s kind of thing to work on the influence strategy. Okay, well how do I feather that into.

My day-to-day conversations and kind of take other people on a journey and kind of bring that up in the right ways. And yeah, one of the things I’ve kind of been toying with a little bit is the sort of like, what’s, what does the not to-do list look like for me? ‘Cause you know, we all have this to-do list, right?

That we, we kind of, we write down at the start of the week and, write what’s the to-do list? And you go through and you, diligently tick things off. And I kinda mentioned the parking lot is, you know, it’s a commonly used bit of language in workshopping techniques and facilitation. Hey, we’re gonna put that in the parking lot.

We’re not gonna talk about that one today, but we know it’s an important issue. And I think the not to-do list is kind of the equivalent for, for my kind of curiosity mindset, brain type thing that goes like, Hey, I could just solve that thing. And I’m gonna write things down in that list, and I’m gonna go, I’m not gonna solve that thing.

I’m not gonna do that thing. I’ve got a team member who’s gonna do that thing, or I’ve got someone else in another team who’s, that’s their job to do that thing. I’m not gonna write those lines of code. I mean, if I did, they’d be terrible. I’ve been playing around with vibe, coding lately, and my goodness, there’s so much I just dunno about, the kind of coding languages I’m writing in and I keep breaking it.

So, it’s a lot of fun to try stuff out, but definitely on that kind of. What’s enough to satisfy my curiosity mindset kind of fits in that kind of space. But then where’s the line where that tips too much into doing someone else’s job for them And mm-hmm. I think that’s the area that, I have to be ruthless with myself on.

And definitely through that process of modeling that behavior, I like to see that as a kind of influence point, on that stuff that where I hold back, I’m setting a kind of precedent for other leaders around me to hold back and to decline meeting invites or decline to get involved in conversations that are beyond the purview of my kind of section and that sort of stuff.

That, is a bit of gold, I think, and not to-do list. I love that. I think I need to do that ’cause I have so many ideas bubbling and I’ve just, just recorded an episode for my private podcast for my membership, the Productivity Gym. And it was about prioritization and I get distracted by good ideas that I learned.

So I’m always learning. I’m always wanting to grow. I’m always reading and I go, oh, that’s a good idea. Oh, that’s a good idea. Someone says, this has worked for me in my business. And I go, oh yeah, I’ll do that. And I always have to bring myself back and I can, if I don’t do that regularly, I end up with loads of plates spinning and I’m running around like a headless chicken, just spinning all these plates that aren’t mine.

They’re not right for me. So I’ve made a really conscious decision over summer. Having space always helps with my mindset of going, what are the plates that I wanna maintain and spin? And I’ve got three and they’re the productivity gym, my membership, they’re my podcasts. And the third one is, I am working more with corporates and they’re my three plates that I’m focusing on.

So now if I get an exciting opportunity, does it fit in those three plates? No. Well then it’s not for now. Might be for the future, but for now it needs to go in my parking lot or my four later space

but it’s not part of your plates right now. I really think that’s a bit of a, a little bit of gold there. Having a not to do list. Yeah. Someone said a phrase that, strategy is more accurately defined by the things that you don’t do, rather than the things that you do do.

I think having that sense of like, what am I not gonna do as a son kind of self-accountability type thing I think will help drive better strategies more than the kind of what am I going to do? Questions because it, and, you know, it should be driven by the goals and where you wanna be and what kind of life you want to have and all that kind of stuff.

Which I think those, those three areas that you’ve identified phenomenal in that kind of thought process. And then you use those to go, okay, well what does that tell me about what I’m not gonna do? Yeah. And I think that’s where it kind of gets exciting, you know? Because everything has sacrifices, right?

You, I love ultra distance running. And that means that I can’t do some other stuff that I love to do. You know, I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but I made a decision having written a few, sort of, short stories and that kind of stuff, is that I can’t do this, and.

And, you know, running gives me more life and I’m gonna do that thing right now. And who knows, I might come back to the, to the, the book writing stuff in the future. And, you know, so I’m not defining myself as a, as a writer right now. Mm-hmm. But I am def defining myself as an ultra, ultra distance runner right now.

Mm. Maybe when the kids grow up, then we’ll be able to have hobbies again. Ed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hobbies that I don’t do at like, one in the morning. That’s the worst part about the ultra distance stuff is I get the kids to bed and, and all that kind of stuff. I, I have a quick tea and then I’m like out until like, you know mm-hmm.

Midnight or whatever. Usually in the winter when it’s like minus five, which really is not fun, so. Mm-hmm. You know, sounds like there are some life choices that I don’t recommend. And lots of them I’ve made. Yeah, I don’t think I will ever become an ultra distance runner. I can hand on heart say, that is not for me a hundred percent.

Mm. Yeah. A mutual acquaintance of us. Your dad used to have a t-shirt that said, exercise is addictive. Don’t start. Yeah. I remember that. I think this is before I got into running and I, kind of laughed at it. Cool. That’s funny. And now that’s what it is. That is my life. I am addicted to this vice that is, running.

So yeah. There’s worse things you could be addicted to. Definitely. As long as I haven’t got like all those things going on at the same time, that’s the problem. Yeah, that’s true. I’m hoping that my dad will come on this podcast in the future. I’d really like him too.

My dad is a bit of a, he’s a bit of a, how I had, you can’t describe him. He’s very unique. I’ve got a lot of his DNA, he’s like a whirlwind. What he’s achieved in his life is amazing, but he’s utterly bonkers in such a wonderful way. And he was a bit addicted to running. He ran marathon after marathon.

He did a few, would you class some of the ones that he did as ultra marathons? He ran the Dale’s Way. Yeah, that’s, that’s definitely, it’s like 80 odd miles or somewhere. And he ran 15 marathons in 15 days and now he’s got two new knees in his, early sixties. So he’s paying the price of running so much, but it really was.

It such an amazing thing for him, and I know when he had to stop running, it was really, really hard and he ended up walking loads. Because he loves being outside. He loved the space, the head space it gave him and things like that. So yeah, not a bad topic. I mean, he’d be a great fit for this podcast ’cause, you know, he’s a serial entrepreneur, is how I would describe him.

He’s, a maverick and an innovator and the kind of person that if you wanna disrupt your thinking and think kind of bigger and more expansive than you’ve ever kind of thought of before. So that’s a teaser for the future episode. When that comes, we will get him on and we’ll just let, we’ll unfer the bonkers nest.

That is my wonderful dad. Great. So anyway, back to the subject head. You talked about a few things. You talked about handover points being really crucial and part of the productivity challenge. Can you give us an example of why they matter, why they are so crucial? So I think organizations move at the speed of trust, right?

Mm-hmm. And so those handover points, they’re the kind of critical moments where you see trust revealed. And they, you can kind of see them most obviously where one team or one individual has, finished working on something and the next team or next group of individuals is going to start working on something else.

And you get these kind of bleed over points back to this kind of baton passing and the relay kind of thing. It’s that little box where they’ve got a handover that bat on and the bleed over points start where someone perhaps steps outside of their box at either end and starts kind of, okay, well I’m gonna try and pick up the bat on a bit sooner.

Because I kind of wanna know what happened with the baton a bit earlier on, I’m not gonna release that yet. ’cause I’m not convinced that that thing’s going to make it all the way if I’m not still involved in that.

The kind of telltale signs on some of that stuff is, you know, those, those people who kind of, you know, they’re saying things like, oh, if I’m not in that meeting, this thing won’t happen. We’ve probably all met those people who are like, can I come to that meeting because, I feel like I need to be there for that.

Or, Hey, I’ve got this perspective. I really think it needs to be brought. And, you know, those are those kind of telltale signs that we probably haven’t clarified. Roles, responsibilities, you know, what the definition of done is as well. Mm-hmm. Kind of between those sections. And so, you know, for us in the product space, our journey and our process starts with the kind of customer insight teams. And they’re kind of, they’re saying, Hey, these are the kind of problems that our customers are tracking with our product owners step in and they’re kind of picking up the solutions and they’re going, okay, well, like actually, how do we, how do we solve the problem?

What’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve here? And bring in the business analysts and our business analyst team are kind of then collaborating together, designing solutions before we get it over to our development team. But at each one of those stages, it’s really important that we have the right people and the right conversations.

And we’re not bringing our developers in too early, but also not too late. And so what are the, you know, what are those right moments to bring somebody in? What are the kind of, the definition of done documentation? Like how are we writing the stuff down? How are we passing the bat on, so to speak?

Avoiding those kind of low trust circumstances where the sort of micromanagement or attending unnecessary meetings or having unnecessary meetings and kind of achieving that sort of more high trust stuff where there’s autonomy, faster decision makings, better kind of focus.

Is getting into the sort of the RACI matrix side of things, and that’s, that’s an acronym if, if you haven’t come across that one before, it stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. Probably more naturally flows from a kind of, authority kind of responsibility perspective.

So accountable, responsible, consulted, informed, and so your accountable person is overall, they’re kind of like this thing has to happen. And they’re on, they’re on the hook for it type thing. Responsible is the person who does it. Consulted is the person who’s engaged during the process for their kind of, their subject matter expertise

or perhaps they’re affected by the change. And then you, the informed is, sort of like a conscious bystander, kind of thing. They need to know what’s going on, but they actually don’t need to be involved in any part of the process. And if you can get those sets of things kind of well understood in your stakeholder mapping processes how you keep the right people informed, how you involve the right people, how you involve the right people in the decision making process, those kinds of things.

I think there’s, there’s quite a lot in there because I say the sort of whole idea that organizations move at the speed of trust. Humans operate really well. In an environment where. They are, they have certainty and they have confidence and they know what they’re supposed to be doing. ’cause nobody likes to be made to look stupid.

And that’s, you know, that’s where we get the worst behavior in, in, in our teams and the people around us is when they feel like they’re being made to look stupid. I know I behave the worst when, when that happens to me.

It turns us into toddlers, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, we’d dig our heels in. I used to hate it when you and Anne in Cat wi team read really, intelligent people books used to make me feel really stupid because I just read like the most rubbish fiction ever. And you and Han had be caught in these like French show, like.

What, you know, just books with a lot of words. So is this why you started this podcast? So now I listen to you talking about all this stuff and you are the, you are the really smart person that I listen to and quote back to other people and say, Hey, did you listen to this thing on productivity?

You know, yeah. Zest kind of stuff. Yeah. And, and they’re, they’re, they’re going, oh, that Jasmine Clark, she’s a smart cookie, eh? Mm-hmm. A hundred percent only reason. I just want people to think I’m smart. That’s the only reason I’ve done this. That’s the solid motivation. Yeah, totally.

You mentioned meetings a few times. I am blessed in the fact that I don’t have a lot of meetings and I am utterly in control of my calendar. I decide who goes in there. I even block tick. I do have calendar links for things like people coming onto my podcast and recording. Coaching sessions, people booking in and things like that when they’ve paid for them.

And I blocked it for the whole of September because I was like, my diary feels really full. I’m going away for a bit. I need to just focus on the things that I need to focus on. And a couple of people, literally just after I blocked it, got in touch, I’m like, oh, I couldn’t get in until October. And I was like, well, yeah, I blocked it,

and you should have booked it in when I sent you the link a month ago. And so I’m really blessed in that I’m utterly in control of my calendar, but a lot of people feel like they’re not in control of their calendar when it comes to meetings, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re expected to be there.

Sometimes they’re invited to things that they shouldn’t have been. Sometimes they’re just really like to be meetings and they’re a bit of a meeting junkie, and they’re, they’re often the bane of productivity. How do you decide who really needs to be in the room and how do you keep meetings useful rather than just hot air and egos?

I think, you know, firstly, as I said earlier, modeling good behavior. Like, start there like, you know, keep a, keep a short account with yourself. If I don’t need to be in places, I send someone else or I don’t go. And I do my best to not ask to go to stuff if I’m not invited by someone else.

I think that’s that sort of thing. The other thing I, I’d kind of say in this is that every person you add into a room decreases the productivity of a meeting because it decreases the trust and the candor that, people can operate within, in those spaces.

Like, you know, more voices you have, the less air time each individual person has. And also the less. Relational capital they have with each other in that space. And so the ability to be kind of frank and honest and kind of say the thing that needs to be said goes down. And so the productivity overall goes down.

And so if you are the meeting owner, guard that attendance list. With your life because your overall productivity, your overall outputs, your overall outcomes and delivery of the thing you are going after depends on getting the candor that you need to have the difficult conversations to build the trust.

Watch out for that over attendance and you know, that sort of desire there, you know, there’s this term in the product space of minimum viable product. But what about the idea of minimum viable attendance? If we could take that approach to meetings, I think that kind of transforms, our kind of approach.

And if we can get that kind of smaller group people, but to do that, you’ve gotta have good agendas. You know, to do that, you’ve gotta have good meeting writeups and notes and, and that kind of stuff so that people can see what was covered in the meetings and what wasn’t. And you can have those follow on conversations if you need to.

And so, on those sorts of things, I think, you know. Protect the meetings model good behavior yourself and when it comes to, protecting your own diary as well. If you are in a, corporate scenario where, perhaps you are expected to be in places and those kinds of things, then make sure that you are in control of some aspects of your diary.

You know, for me, I have blocks in my diary, two or three times a week. It’s kind of a rhythm that goes in for focus time where I get to progress, the things that I get to progress, so that the meetings don’t control my diary and my productivity and my output. Because a big part of what I’m supposed to do is I’m supposed to think, I’m supposed to research, I’m supposed to innovate.

I cannot think, I cannot drive, outcomes. And kind of transformative thinking through an organization where I’ve got back-to-back meetings. Nine through five, five days a week kind of thing. And so making sure that you’ve got that time to do what productivity looks like for you in your diary rather than what productivity looks like for other people

in your diary. That is, that’s a kind of critical thing in that space for me. Some gold there about every person that you add to a meeting decreases productivity. So being really ruthless and not inviting people to scratch their back or give them an ego boost or for a reason that’s not needed, it’s thinking about why is that person there?

And if you get invited to a meeting and you think, do I need to be there? It’s all right to ask for the agenda. It’s all right to ask for the reason why, and be your own gatekeeper to your diary to protect it. And having the agenda. So many meetings just done and it’s like, oh, we’re talking about this.

And they might have a subject title, but then they just spend 50 minutes talking around it and the last 10 minutes scrambling to actually talk about the thing that they were meant to. Very frustrating. And the other thing on the, the whole agenda side of things is.

Try and push people towards outcomes based genders. Mm-hmm. As opposed to outputs. It’s like, what do you wanna be able to say at the end of the meeting? Mm-hmm. That’s like one of the number one questions I ask as a workshop facilitator or someone who’s kind of hosting a, a meeting or those kinds of things, is what do you wanna be able to say at the end of this?

What do you wanna be able to do at the end of this? Because if someone can’t answer those questions, then it’s probably just a talking shop. And you should avoid that meeting, like get outta that meeting as quickly as you can. You know, so what, what do you wanna be able to say at the end of this?

What do you wanna be able to do? Because if you’re not gonna be able to say or do something different as a result of 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour in your diary, then it’s not driving productivity. As jazz kind of eloquently put it there, sort of, it’s massaging people’s egos and, and it, it’s busy work, fundamentally.

So we are coming near to the end and we cannot have a conversation, ed, without talking about Underpants, gns. So for those of you that haven’t watched South Park, there is. It’s in a few episodes, isn’t it? Where there’s these underpants gns where they have an amazing business plan and they phase one is collect underpants.

Phase two is a big question mark. And then phase three is profit. And we used to use this all the time when we were working together, and it helped us when things felt like they were going a bit bonkers. And it just was just one of those things that became something that we talked about a lot. So firstly, ed, what phase do you think you’re in?

You in phase one collect underpants, phase two or phase three profit? Oh, that’s such a great question. I love this question, right? I think at any given point, we should have a little bit of all three happening at the same time. That’s my initial kind of hot take on this because what I love about this business strategy is that it fits so much with the agile mindset that I work within in the product space, because agile mindset kind of says like, Hey, you should know what the end goal is, right?

The end goal is profit, and you should also know what the next step is. But what kind of comes in between is kind of this sort of noodly space where we’re not quite sure what we’re gonna do next. And so you sort of, at any given point, I think, you know, for me as a leader in this space and as a manager in this space, I should be kind of painting that future vision of profit, right.

I should be saying, right. You know, this is the future visions phase three. And defining that goal, defining the outcomes that we’re kind of going for. What is the impact we’re aiming for overall? There should be a little bit of that headspace, right? And we should also be seeing some of the fruit of that from phase one years and years prior as well.

I should be working really closely with the teams who are kind of saying, well, what’s the next step? What’s the first thing that we need to do when we get up today? How do I know I’ve done a good job? How do I know I’ve achieved something? And that’s the, well, it’s collecting underpants, right?

We’re gonna collect those pants. The bit where I really enjoy is floating about in the nebulous space and going, okay, so. We’re getting the underpants, we know we’re going for profit. But where we might go next with the underpants is, you know, we could go five or six different directions depending on the data and what it’s telling us.

You know, the kind of opportunities in the kind of market or the kind of an economic environment around us, and holding those things lightly. I think is, just so much fun. It’s so releasing, right? Mm-hmm. And that’s what I love about this framework, I think the original thing when I was like, Hey, jazz, if you love to do so, I’d love to do something together.

Let’s do a South Park School of Business or something like that. Was the kind of lessons that I see in phase one. Know what that kind of next step is. Know what the thing is that you’re focused on right now today. Phase three being the kind of goal for the future, but holding the next step after the collecting underpants thing lightly.

I think there’s just so much wisdom in that. And so, yeah, south Park School of Business coming your way in a year to be determined, but I’m excited about that. And all the copyright infringements, that will be just ironic that Matt Stone and Trey Parker, will be suing us for, but my meta goal is that eventually they make a South Park episode about us making a South Park business school.

That’s the, the long term meta goal. It was about six months ago, isn’t it, ed? Where we were at a conference and I think we were spending the breaks just outlining all the different modules for this amazing course that we were gonna create. So, you know, let’s watch this space that’s in the parking lot at the moment, but who knows when it might drive into the road.

I love this metaphor thing. The more I think about it, I think it’s a metaphor for coaching as well. So when you are doing professional coaching, executive coaching with somebody, or life coaching, any kind of coaching in a professional way, you help people really understand what their phase three is, their profit, what is their goal?

What is their outcome? Where are they going? You also help ’em understand what they’re doing now, which is what underpants are you collecting. So you help them fully understand and unpack phase one and phase three. And then in coaching it’s like magic because then the unknown becomes known and suddenly, you know, a next step towards phase three.

Suddenly what seemed intangible and what seemed like there was no path nor way there. Suddenly a step forward appears like magic. So I think South Park have. They’ve transformed the way I work, but also it’s just, it was just really funny at the time, and we still send South Park gifts to each other, don’t we, ed?

Great. So finally, ed, if you could leave our listeners with one principle for being productive when you’re not fully in control, what would it be? Wow. One principle. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh my days. Oh my days, right. So, I’m kind of torn between two. Okay. So, okay. I’ll give you two. Well, we’ll, we’ll see how it goes.

We’ll see how it goes. I might decide on one by the time we get to the end of this, but I think, there’s the kind of outcomes over outputs. Right? That’s gonna be critical. And the other one is the organizations move at the speed of trust.

Those are the two things that if I wanted anyone to hear from us, spending some time together today is, productivity looks like focusing on outcomes over outputs. Don’t count the things on your to-do list count the progress you’ve made towards the outcome overall.

Mm-hmm. And that’s harder work to do and it’s deeper work to do, but that’s as a principle count the things that matter. Not the things that are easy to count, right? But the other principle I kind of say is that, you know, organizations move at the speed of trust. And so it doesn’t matter how good your outcomes are that you’re focused on, focus on the people, focus on the relationships.

You know, find those, find those shared things of common ground. Because those things are the, the things that build the, build the relationship, and they are the currency. That, you know, we, we deliver impact through.

Mm-hmm. And what’s the point of doing anything if we’re not having fun doing it? Right. ’cause we only get one life and I kind of wanna enjoy doing my job. And a big thing that has a bearing on what, you know, my job is, yeah, I wanna do impact orientated work that changes people’s lives, but I also wanna do it alongside people who are freaking awesome.

And I have a freaking fun time doing that stuff with too. Look for those people. Look for the, who are your people and how do you get alongside them? Deliver something that really matters. Hmm. Who do you want to collect underpants with? That’s what Ball is down to. Oh my.

Oh, I thought you were asking me then. I was like, oh my goodness. I’m just gonna like announce that on the podcast. Right. So I really like this person, this person. No, you can keep, keep it. Keep the names to yourself. You can tell me when we stopped recording. Okay. That was a rhetorical question. It was, yeah.

So listeners, who do you wanna collect underpants with? Ed, it has been a real pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for carving our time in your very busy and complicated to me life. I really, really appreciate it. It is an absolute pleasure to be here.

I’ve had a lot of fun and yeah, always up for these kind of conversations because this is the kind of crux of what makes stuff happen, right? We want to have a lasting impact on the lives of people around us and that kind of stuff. That’s why we do what we do and that productivity is what makes that stuff happen, so, mm-hmm.

It is great to be part of a podcast and a program of work that is changing people’s lives and helping to achieve that stuff. Fantastic. Thank you, ed, and look out for the South Pat School of Business and Ed’s future novels. That is what we all need to look out for in the future. See you later, ed.

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