Clive Byrne: I’ve been shaped by good and bad bosses

You lot are intriguing. There are so many interesting people with fantastic management and leadership stories signed up to the academy ‘I learn therefore I am’ LinkedIn group… so we decided to profile group members every now and then so we can all learn from, and be inspired by, each other.

Our first guinea pig, ahem, subject is Clive Byrne, Call Centre & Telesales Manager for Australian Power & Gas  (thank you Clive!) –and I’m sure he won’t mind us calling him a contact centre veteran.

After all, Clive started his career in call centres back in 1987 as a customer service representative. Over the years he has held a variety of line management roles, dabbled in call centre technology and also consulted to the industry. He’s been with Optus (a few times!), AAPT, Canon for the last five years and has just started a new role heading up the outbound call centre for Australian Power & Gas.

What, if anything, did you change when you changed jobs?

Well, I was brought in to implement change so the expectation was there from the outset.  But what I ended up changing was unexpected.

We are a small team of 10 whose main remit is to make outbound calls. (The inbound calls are outsourced.) However, inbound calls were coming through to us and getting in the way of what we were supposed to be doing.

So I negotiated with our outsourced provider and found a way around it. We are now able to conduct value-add activities without adding to the headcount, which is important at the moment.

What surprised you about the new job?

There were no major surprises about the role but I was surprised in a good way about the company culture.  Every Friday afternoon, the company has drinks and nibbles. I thought that had long gone in these, um, more politically correct days.

It’s a bit old-fashioned, but it’s great. It gets people together in a social atmosphere. At 4pm, we down tools and catch up and wind down. People can still leave by 5pm if they want to… or they can stay. You can’t underestimate the power of strong relationships and this helps build them faster.

Is there anything about your background that you would say has shaped you and the way you manage?

Most of all, I think I’ve been shaped by previous managers, good and bad. Hopefully I’ve taken on some of the traits of the good and avoided the pitfalls of the bad.

Do you believe management and leadership are different? How so?

Oh yes. Definitely.  Management is all about processes, operations and activity. It’s monitoring and supervision.

Leadership is leading people. It’s all about people.

Both are important but leadership is much harder. In theory, I think you can manage without people skills (depends on the job!) but for leadership you need communication. And not just communication… effective communication.

How do you lead?

Hmmm, I’m trying to avoid clichés.  I guess you could say it varies depending on the type of people around me.

In some organisations I have needed to be directive, although that’s not my natural or preferred style.  In others, I have been able to be empowering… something I much prefer and is much more enjoyable for everyone.

It has depended on urgency and objectives and, let’s be honest, competence of team members. The analogy is with the armed forces. In the heat of the battle, you need someone telling people what to do, not telling them to figure it out for themselves. Of course what I have worked on over the years is not life-and-death in that way, but if it has been urgent and vital to the bottom line, you sometimes need to choose to operate this way.

And be flexible enough to switch when the circumstances are right for empowerment. I certainly like to be managed in that way.

Are you a parent? Has that changed how you manage people?

I am. I have two girls, 11 and 10 years old. And, yes, I am sure parenting has changed how I manage at work. It’s probably best expressed as softening me a little bit; helping me to be more tolerant, empathetic and compassionate. Our kids have very different personalities and it reinforces how everyone is different and responds to different styles and motivations.

So if you manage according to that you may take more time to uncover and understand people.

Have you ever had a truly bad boss? What did you learn from it?

Yes I have. (Huge laugh)

I’ve had some nutters in my time, a long time ago. I guess I’ve learned to deal with poor management better. If I had that time over, I would handle it differently.

My worst boss was back when I still lived with Mum and Dad. I remember telling them about it and having Dad say: “Regardless, he’s still your boss”. That’s a good lesson.

So these days if I don’t agree, I push back, I get my point of view across, but if my boss really wants something to happen a certain way, he or she is my boss, and I do it. If you really don’t like it, sometimes you should move on and everyone will be happier.

When you’re young and you have a bad boss, it’s almost confusing. You wonder if you are ‘supposed to’ behave that way. Your heart, instinct and common sense says no. And then you go on to a great boss and you realise your instincts were right.

What advice do you have for other managers?

I think you have to know your limitations. There’s a line from Magnum Force or something Clint Eastwood I think that says, “A man’s got to know his limitations”.

(Ed, fact checking – Yes it was 1973’s ‘Magnum Force’ starring Clint Eastwood.)

Be aware of your limitations, don’t worry too much about them (we all have them!) but do what you can to counterbalance.

What are some classic management mistakes that you see over and over?

Oh the biggest and most prevalent one is lack of communication. Either not communicating at all, or not doing so effectively.

And relying too much on email. Yes, I’m guilty of that from time to time. Using the wrong communication medium. We are all sometimes tied to our desks waiting for the next email to come in.

Final thoughts?

I find it a little sad that people don’t see call centres as a great career. Many people outside the industry see it as a temporary job.  But so many people work in it. It’s a big industry that’s underrated.

(Ed – 250,000 across Australia, or more than 1% of population, work in contact centres.)

I would be proud if my kids ended up working in the call centre industry.

Innovation, velcro and the university of life

Ideas + change = innovation

Innovation has been on my mind lately. Why? Because frankly, no business survives without it.  And my partners and I want a great deal more than mere survival for academy!

As a business owner, I obviously have a very personal stake in managing innovation. But whether you own the business you work in or not, everyone should  passionately care about it.

The benefits for the business are inarguable, but for the individual too… wouldn’t you rather work somewhere where your ideas are valued and you are encouraged (and given time) to think about what you are doing?  I know I would.

An innovative idea about, well… ideas

One of my favourite examples of innovation is a recent one. It speaks to the educator in me and it has at its core the DNA of innovation…  a simple idea arrived at by thinking about something in a different way.

Chris Anderson, entrepreneur and owner of TED, connected the dots; curious people looking for ideas and inspiration, people with inspiring ideas they were willing to share, and a technologically and socially linked planet. Thus TED (in its current form) was born.  Anderson has now loosened the brand’s apron strings, giving rise to a multitude of TEDx events and ideas translated into many languages.

If you haven’t yet seen a TED – or TEDx – video, I’ll post my two favourites at the end.  If you’re not a ‘TED person’ already, I bet you will be after having a look.

Indeed, this whole blog post was originally going to be about how TED is a virtual university of life and business; one that encourages life long learning and also delivers it to people in a form that they control… but then I saw this excellent Fast Company article. Please have a read.

TED is a big idea; a simple one that has changed how many people spread ideas. It’s an innovation itself, but it’s also a cultural phenomenon that can help others to innovate, stimulating new ways of looking at things.

But you don’t have to have one big idea to create a culture of innovation. Sometimes innovation is merely doing better with what you have, doing something in a slightly different way because you took the time to think through a process that made more sense.

Supporting an innovation culture

Just a few of the actions academy takes to support an innovation culture in this workplace are (not surprisingly!) internal and external education and development programs for all staff; cross-functional (and self-directed) teams to manage new initiatives and training projects; and regular  ‘Velcro’ Days for trainers (so things stick!). Even more importantly, I hope we communicate the value we place of innovation across the company.

What happens in your workplace to support innovation? Could where you work be more innovative? What would you suggest to senior management?

P.S. Here are the two TED and TEDx videos I was talking about… one is Nigel Marsh on work / life balance and was presented in May 2010 in Sydney. And the other is Sir Ken Robinson on education and creativity – inspiring stuff.

Old-fashioned fun leads to team success

Old-fashioned fun = contact centre success

Collecting debt isn’t an easy job and is probably one of the toughest in the contact centre industry. You are exposed to people suffering extreme hardship through to those who just don’t like to pay their bills.

Through it all you need to keep your cool and focus on the objective – to provide a “win-win” for everyone! When you look at it that way, it’s also one of the most complex customer interactions in the industry.

Last Friday night, was the Australian Teleservices Association academy Awards for Contact Centre Excellence (yes, we proudly sponsored) and the collections team that won the Under 50 FTE category was inspiring.

Who are these people? They are the Collections team from FlexiGroup.  I was blown away by the sense of togetherness, teamwork and good old-fashioned fun that emanated from them as they celebrated their nomination – and then their win.

The business reasons they won (the numbers if you like) are truly impressive. Over the past year, the team has saved the company $4 million and increased productivity 25%.

It’s clear to see these results have been achieved through teamwork, support, training and people who care a great deal about each other. Indeed, the CEO was there on Friday night, celebrating the team’s success right alongside them. (The FlexiGroup New Business group also won their category of 50-120 FTE, no accident I am sure.)

While I don’t know the team members personally, I bet many of them are friends for life.  When you spend so much time at work, sometimes engaged in stressful activities, isn’t it fantastic to do it with people you like?

That’s what we aim for at academy.

FlexiGroup’s wins are a compelling argument for ‘people-first’ management and I, for one, would like to learn more about how they make this work so well.

Congratulations to FlexiGroup, iiNet (who won the 120+ FTE contact centre category), the nominees; and all the incredible individual nominees and winners. The contact centre industry is about people and service and it’s inspiring to see how you all ‘walk the talk’.

Intergenerational leadership – A marketing furphy?

Australia’s next MasterManager

Adriano Zumbo's V8 cake: Perfect teamwork

As a manager you have to hope your team is not going to be as hard for you to wrangle as an Adriano Zumbo creation is for an aspiring MasterChef.

Did you see that angelic-looking V8 cake on the show last night? For those of you who did not, it was eight thin layers of cake heaven (well, Adriano’s was, anyway!)… eight layers of vanilla used in different ways, with more than 140 ingredients and four hours of cooking.  The picture is to the left and the recipe link is here.

The reason the cake is such a showstopper is that each layer builds on a theme and is very different from the others, but (and it’s a big but*), they are perfectly complementary and would not work nearly so well without the others. Hang on… isn’t that how a team should be?

It really made me think… if managers (and I am one) put as much effort and passion into understanding the ingredients of their teams, how they work together and how they work as a whole, many businesses may just be in even better shape.

I certainly can’t tell you how to do that in one blog post, it takes different combinations of training, personal development, mentoring and coaching, passion and plain old hard work, for different people. But if we think of Adriano Zumbo as manager and cake as team, we can better understand how important care and attention to each element is when you are creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

* Madly trying to avoid a joke about eating too much cake here

The yin and yang of sales

The yin and yang of sales

Some people may be able to ‘sell ice to Eskimos’ and others may be ‘born salespeople’, but I tend to disagree with the notion that great sales people are only born and cannot be made.

I believe that anybody who is passionate and believes in their product will inspire others to buy.

Furthermore, a natural ability to build relationships, through an empathic ability to identify people’s needs and wants (even when they cannot voice them!) will also close many a deal.

So all of these traits will bode well for a sales person’s potential to generate revenue.

However, I have also worked with many competent sales people who achieve solid results largely through hard work and discipline. These people may not necessarily be ‘naturals’ when it comes to relationship building and management, but their persistent dedication often gets them across the line.

I always hesitate to generalise, however perhaps we can conclude that there are at least two distinct ‘types’ of high achieving sales people. Leaving each ‘type’ with a variety of skills that can still be developed. Indeed, to be a truly great sales person, I believe people need to use tools from a variety of sources, with a range of leaders and mentors.

Sometimes this means training yourself (or being trained!) to go against a natural inclination. Good sales people who are strong on relationships can be coached in disciplined processes. And good sales people who rely on top notch systems can have their people skills developed, by good managers and training.

Having a mix of these natural skills sets in your sales team can only help. Companies that develop a range of attributes in their team may just elevate their sales from good to great.

What do you think makes for a great sales person?