Interviewer: Alright, welcome Mr Simon Banks. We really appreciate your time to have a bit of a chat with us about some leadership management issues.
Simon: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Interviewer: Just to get the ball rolling, I’d be really interested in your take on how you’ve seen leadership change over your leadership journey.
Simon: I really like all the questions you’ve set out as well. There are probably three or four key things.
I think, one, the idea that you have to know everything. There’s often this idea that you’re the leader, you’re maybe the highest paid in the company, you need to know everything. But that’s impossible because things move so quickly.
I’ve seen really good leaders say, “Look, I don’t know, but let’s find out.” That’s a shift from pretending you know or trying to bluff your way through.
I’ve also seen a very strong focus on developing others, not just developing yourself. We go on leadership development programs, so it can become very inward-focused. Really, it’s about developing the people around you and your team.
I heard a quote: “You’re not a leader until you’ve developed another leader who’s developed another leader.” As a leader in a company, I need to be creating that future generation of leaders. It’s very much that human element, getting the best out of everyone.
So it’s more than just making tough decisions. Great organisations are living entities full of people. You can have the best technology, the best platforms, the best systems, but all problems and successes always come back to people, I’ve found.
And the stories I hear from the people I work with are that when a leader can be vulnerable, actually be honest, and not put on a big tough mask, that makes a difference. Those are some of the key things I’ve seen and heard from the communities I work with.
Interviewer: Fantastic. How, then, in your role and your business and leadership, do you find inspiration?
Simon: This is one of my favourite questions.
You have to be an inspiration seeker. It will not come to you. You have to go after it with a sledgehammer. I think that’s a Jack London quote.
If you sit on your backside every day, do the same thing day in and day out, and don’t put any time into seeking inspiration, you won’t find it. It’s like exercise. We say, “They’re so fit, they’re so lucky.” It’s not luck. They make the effort.
So it’s the same with inspiration.
I like to call myself an experience seeker. I like to search out and try new things constantly, possibly to my detriment sometimes around focus. I really like to seek and do new things.
It’s important to spend time out of your comfort zone. I’m not talking about throwing yourself off the deep end, but when we step out of our comfort zone we often discover we’re capable of much more than we thought. It changes your mindset, and you often get more done as well.
And keep trying new things. Inspiration is everywhere if you open your eyes and look for it. Most of us spend our time in a little world of emails, social media, tap, tap, tap, while there’s this amazing world going on around us that we can easily ignore.
Interviewer: Leading on from that, how do you encourage innovative ideas?
Simon: This is one of the key things I like to talk about.
I spoke on the CPA Roadshow last year about looking at the world with travellers’ eyes. Imagine when we travel. From the moment you step into a new country, your senses are on overload. The air smells different, feels different. You hear different sounds and dialects. You notice patterns on the footpaths. You take photos of windows and doors for some reason.
We have travellers’ eyes. The number one thing is: open your eyes.
The other thing I’m really keen on is creative confidence. My strongly held belief is that we all have this superpower, our creative, curious, imaginative mind.
As adults, we get very good at saying, “Not for me. That’s for kids,” or “That’s for other people.” We exercise one part of our brain and neglect the other.
We all have ideas, but often we don’t have the creative confidence to share them or to try something that might not work.
What works the first time? If you write an assignment, you reread it, then reread it again. So be open to trying new things.
IDEO, the human-centred design firm, and the d.school at Stanford have a book called Creative Confidence. Once people get that idea, you see the lights go on. “I can try new things. I can experiment. I can share a half-baked idea without fear of being laughed at.”
Uber was a half-baked idea. Airbnb was a half-baked idea. No idea is ever born fully formed. You iterate and try new things.
And if we want ideas to keep flowing, we need to get rid of the “no”s and the “but”s in our organisations. Listen in meetings. You’ll hear: “No, but we’ve tried that before,” or “No, but that’s not how we do things around here.”
Shift that to “Yes, and…”. It doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It means allowing ideas to thrive.
The ideas are already there. It’s about creating the environment where people can bring them out and develop the confidence to explore them.
Interviewer: A lot of leaders think every horse has to be a winner. How do you cope with failure or criticism?
Simon: I’d get rid of the mantra of “fail fast”. It has become a slogan.
I prefer “experiment quickly”.
Don’t launch something huge immediately. Take Masters Hardware as an example. Woolworths launched around a hundred stores at once to compete with Bunnings. Imagine if they had started with one store, tested it, listened to customers and suppliers, refined the mix, and then expanded.
Start small, experiment quickly, and if it isn’t working, be willing to put a line through it.
Ask: Is it economically feasible? Is it technologically viable? And, most importantly, is it desirable?
Experiment quickly, iterate rapidly, and stop the horse before it starts racing if the feedback isn’t there.
Interviewer: How can leaders turn a vision into reality?
Simon: I love the saying: “Stop starting and start finishing.”
See your project through to the end.
When I wrote my book, one of the most useful things was having an accountability buddy or a group of people I could share goals with and who could keep me accountable.
Break big visions into smaller steps. Work on those smaller steps consistently.
And if something is really important to you, block out time for it at the time of day when you do your best work. Make it the number one thing you do that day.
Interviewer: One of the things I’m passionate about is making sure there isn’t a vacuum when a leader leaves. What are the keys to developing the next generation of leaders?
Simon: Let them be leaders.
Give them responsibility to make decisions. Give them good coaching. Not everything will be a winner.
Let them shine.
I reflect on my own work. When you have your own brand, you want to do everything yourself. But you need to let go and outsource as much as you can.
Your role is not necessarily to do everything, but to enable the people around you to do what they do well and let them shine.
I haven’t worked inside a large organisation through that transition myself, so my perspective is a little different. But all my audiences are leaders, and that’s probably the best advice I can give.
Interviewer: Simon, thank you so much for your time and for those gems.
Simon: You’re very welcome. I’m glad to be invited to speak.
