54. Building a Transformation Mindset in Finance | with Rob Jackson

54. Building a Transformation Mindset in Finance | with Rob Jackson, VP of Finance Operations at Sage

Hannah Munro: 1:11 

So, hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. As usual, I am your hostess. Take you through everything financial transformation. And with me today is Rob Jackson. Now, he doesn't officially like his title, so, I'm just going to introduce him as the person in charge of finance operations at Sage. But for those that don't know him, he does have a rather nice title with a V and a P in it. So, we're going to leave it at that and move on. So, hi, Rob. Great to have you on the 

Rob Jackson: 1:40 

Hi, Hannah. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me on. 

Hannah Munro: 1:43 

Brilliant. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you end up doing what you do at Sage? What was your journey? 

Rob Jackson: 1:50 

Yeah, a weird and wiggly route, I suppose, like quite a lot of careers these days. So, I am, I think I'm actually hit my 20 year of like proper grown-up working because I don't count running Mr. Rabbit's Tropical Travels at Thorpe Park as a proper job, right? So, I've been 50-50 professional services and industry roles actually over those 20 years or so, And I've moved in between the two rather than a block of 10. So, I've worked for BA Systems, BT Sage on the corporate side and I've worked two stints with EY and one period of time with IBM as well on more sort of finance transformation consulting side of things and I've just kind of moved between the two and here I am doing what I think is my favourite role so, far which is good. 

Hannah Munro: 2:41 

So, why don't you just explain the role you're currently doing, how would you describe it? 

Rob Jackson: 2:46 

Yeah, sure. So, I'm responsible for group finance operations at Sage, and that really has two big elements to it, right? So, one would be those, you know, what you'd expect from finance operations, the core finance elements of running processes that support collecting cash from customers, that support paying suppliers and deploying partners accurately and on time, and that support closing the books reliably and accurately on time, hitting all of our schedules. So, our finance shared services, essentially running those core processes. And then the other arm of mine My role is more on the transformation, change and systems side of things. So, I have the team who look after all of our enterprise performance management software, so, planning, reporting, consolidation, that kind of stuff. And I have a team of process analysts, change and process systems support, kind of ticketing people on the ERP side as well. 

Hannah Munro: 3:49 

So, that's a lot of moving parts in terms of sitting under obviously your remit. What are some of the challenges that you face when you're working on a financial transformation piece with such a big team? 

Rob Jackson: 4:06 

Yeah, so, what I would say is, in my opinion, there are more upsides than challenges from that perspective, because the brilliant thing about it is you can drive the change, but you're also responsible for the people who are absorbing a lot of that change. So, whereas sometimes things can get misaligned when you've got a team that's just transformation, and they aren't as well connected to the ops you might want to, you know, I'm there to play that bridge and that role to make sure everything's joined up. But when you have, we're not the biggest finance operations group in the FTSE 50 by any stretch of it, but 250 people all in different locations. There are a whole set of team and people, interesting challenges and cultural aspects to work on and deal with. And because of some of the history of where Sage has come from, from a finance function, from an overall corporate perspective, we have some kind of challenging process contexts and disparities across our group to get over and do better as in order to give those standard processes higher quality outputs that we'd be looking to deliver. 

Hannah Munro: 5:13 

So, when you were coming into the transformation role, because how long have you been in the role now? 

Rob Jackson: 5:19 

So, getting on for two and two and a half years, not that far off now. 

Hannah Munro: 5:24 

I was going to say, because I remember it popping up on my feed when you joined at one point. So, but yeah, so, two and a half years in, what was it that actually attracted you to work at Sage in the first place? And in this kind of role, what was it that sort of caught your interest? 

Rob Jackson: 5:40 

So, it was a number of things, really. partly it was the ability to do both of those things, right? Both the operations. I really like the big people management and the communication and the engagement of a big team, but I need the interest and challenge of transformation as well. So, this role had both of those packaged together. I was super interested and still am in Sage as a business, you know, as effectively a finance transformation professional and finance operations professional, you know, the products that we sell is a finance transformation product or the products as well as obviously we have fantastic people products as well right but so, actually a product you could really be interested in the front office of the side of things because you know I had a great time at BT and BAE but those product sets weren't something I was really passionate about um if I'm honest so, so, it's that aspect and you know really procedurally down to my life I live in London I like living in London and there aren't many of my types of jobs that actually are based in the centre of London. So, I get to sit here in the Shard, do my job, travel around pre-pandemic. And so, all of that just kind of ticked all my boxes. 

Hannah Munro: 6:54 

Absolutely. So, you talked very much about the people management and the communication being something that you're, you know, personally quite passionate about. And obviously that, I think people really underestimate the impact of that on financial transformation. So, talk to me about you starting a new work or new project, what are the things that people need to think about? And what do you do when you'll start kicking off a new financial transformation program or project? 

Rob Jackson: 7:24 

Yeah. So, I think even before we sort of move to an individual project, there's some general rolling the pitch and cultural change that you need to get people ready for. So, that actually, because, you know, finance transformation programs and projects are I think the world we're living in, there will never be a time when we're not transforming or evolving fast, however which way you do it. So, actually setting yourself up to say this is a program and then this is a period of normality, I don't think that works anymore. So, one of the things I started preaching immediately after I joined was this kind of that we needed a culture of innovation and being prepared to challenge and change things always, right? Regardless of, and then you have bigger or smaller things. initiatives within that. the bigger ones you then have to set up properly from a project perspective you get your stakeholder management you do all of those kind of traditional things but what's been interesting to me especially in this is actually the power of the small wins and the continuous improvement if you can get enough people along on that journey and put enough you know and we're not quite the citizen developer stage but we've put more capability in more people's hands and it's really helping us drive some continuous improvement without having to declare big projects and the governance and gates and all the things that go with the bigger change projects 

Hannah Munro: 8:47 

so, you mentioned an interesting concept around getting your citizens on board as it were so, for those that don't maybe have not sort of gone into this depth of transformation and some of the science behind it talk to us about that approach that that concept of small wins and you know handing over responsibility what are you doing there 

Rob Jackson: 9:09 

yes, I mean I guess that this theory was a blend of two things, one, isn't it? It's partly the British cycling, Dave Bales for marginal gains type stuff, right? How little things add up together and partially this point about wanting to move fast and have people feel empowered. And actually because of the structure that you necessarily need to put around big projects, because sometimes there are niche skills involved, you have that wind up time and that project. And... That's great, and that's necessary on many big changes. But there are other things, you know, with the evolving workflows, using some of the Microsoft Power-type tools that you can do much faster. And if you can give people in your teams as either continuous improvement leads or champions and things like that, the capability and the empowerment just to go do, right? You're not fundamentally going to break anything here. Go do. We've seen really good benefits. And those benefits, obviously, in terms of the process, and speed and customer service. But what I've been able to see where I sit, we spend a lot of time looking at our employee net promoter score, so, ENPS. And what's relatively easy for me to see is the teams that most embrace that oftentimes, almost all the time, the ones with a higher employee NPS because they feel as though they've got more control over their working environment, their working day and the processes that they're being asked to execute. 

Hannah Munro: 10:39 

So, if I summarize that, So, what you're doing is you're handing over the ability to customize and automate their own workflows, sort of like what we talk about when we talk about BPA or business process automation. You're giving individual teams across SAGE access to those tools, not just the finance team. Have I got that right? 

Rob Jackson: 10:59 

Yeah, across finance operations for sure. So, the thing, especially with the Microsoft stuff, is we're wall-to-wall Microsoft, right? So, actually everyone's got a lot more capability at their hands than they really realize. And what we've just tried to do is harness that by using Power Apps to make things more intuitive, by using Power Automate where it's sensible to do so, and those are things where we don't have to go through a procurement exercise. We don't have to go through IT architecture exercises and all of that kind of stuff. We can get on and do. And yeah, it's not all that we do, but it's important to address the tactical, the short-term as well is strategic. 

Hannah Munro: 11:42 

Yeah, and I think that's what excites me. So, there are, and just for everyone listening, there are lots of business process automation tools, so, BPA for short. And it's really exciting that the tools that are coming out, both in terms of small, medium and large, you know, finance software have the ability to connect into these tools to allow these processes to be automated. So, if we talk about, you know, that concept of small wins, of handing over responsibility, how do you balance that with fundamentally like making sure that processes are streamlines and that something that they do doesn't impact the wider finance operation. So, how do you make sure that they're not going down a route that perhaps isn't a good one let's put it that way? 

Rob Jackson: 12:26 

yeah and in part that's why we've not gone that full citizen developer a robot on every laptop type concept right because that that would worry me so, so, what we've done is build up a series of SMEs and kind of centre of excellence type stuff whereby we've got the core skills held within central teams within finance operations, but we create a network of champions and continuous improvement leads in the shared service centres or in the sub teams within the shared service centres. So, there's always a bit of, you know, between governance and kind of insight, knowledge sharing, what have you. There are some eyes on what we're doing to keep it sensible, to keep it joined up because those guys can say, actually, you're trying to solve the same problem that the South African Shared Service Centre solved two months ago. So, actually go talk to them, you know, share the share the capability. 

Hannah Munro: 13:26 

and that's a really interesting piece isn't it because sage is a global team you're working across in different continents different countries sometimes different languages how do you make sure that your teams are talking to each other during these transformation projects and sharing good practice. 

Rob Jackson: 13:43 

yeah, and it's definitely one of those much easier said is it's something that you can get it's really to get everyone nodding along like yeah, we're going to talk to each other we're going to work together it's Much harder to get it to work in reality. So, I suppose there's a combination of things we do. One of actually the simpler things I do is actually we've got a Teams group that's got all of us on it. And fundamentally, it's my primary communication mechanism. So, I don't send all team emails or any of that kind of stuff. I just do it on Teams to drive people into Teams. But we also use it to share success on projects, and that comes from different teams. So, it gives things a bit of visibility and gives people the opportunity to say, hey, that might work for me as well and know who's working on it. And then we try and drive... cross-functional in our context. We're all finance, but you know what I mean? Squads or teams where we're pulling people together and we will intentionally bring people in who maybe aren't directly involved but would benefit from understanding about that. So, it's kind of loose, I suppose, but we work it within our community. 

Hannah Munro: 14:56 

Yeah, and I like that on-demand style approach. I talked a bit on our podcast a while back about moving away from sort of emails and more self-accessing information and updates at a time zone. Because again, you've got time zones to counter with, haven't you? And sometimes emails coming through at nine o'clock at night can be a little bit antisocial in some ways. So, that's always interesting. So, obviously, communication, sharing of knowledge and best practice. What other... What else from a communication perspective is really key in terms of, you know, going through that transformation process? 

Rob Jackson: 15:36 

What else is key? So, partly it's the culture and the mindset. type thing. So, one of the things we've been doing at Sage is, and we'd started doing it in my area. We got in IBM because I'd been there to do some design thinking training. And now it's, you know, separately, it's a much bigger thing at Sage. And we have an internal continuous innovation team that sits kind of out of our sort of product-ish area who run design thinking training for everyone. And so, partly is that mindset of getting people saying, this is a normal part of our job. now this is essential and what it helps me do is I see the people in my team and I've had about 60 70 people now in my team who put themselves through the design thinking training it's really clear to then sort of champion those people highlight it because that for me is an indicator of a mindset of someone who's going to be with us on that future journey who's prepared to challenge their current thinking and therefore develop their skills and all those things we're going to need in the like the near future world as well as the longer future world. So, there's definitely a thing about mindset and skills as well as the knowledge sharing. 

Hannah Munro: 16:50 

So, I've got a few interesting questions on this because I have this debate a lot. So, obviously you work across financial operations and transformation. So, you sort of architect both. Do you have a different mindset? Do you see those two as fundamentally different types of people or is it just happened to be the role that they're currently performing? 

Rob Jackson: 17:12 

I tend to live in the gray. So, there are people who can move between the two, right, for sure and be successful in both. I think inevitable. There are some people, however, in operations who couldn't. do that. And there were some people in transformation who couldn't do that either, right? For entirely different reasons, right? And one of the things I try really hard to work on, because I'm communicating to actually quite a diverse group, from any perspective, you might want to talk about that. So, one of the bits of feedback actually quite a lot of us have had, but me personally had as well, is you can talk a bit like, everyone understands what the company's strategy is, and even things that some might think are baked in, like what SaaS stands for. And actually, if you put yourself down to an orders cash agent who might be relatively new out of school or what have you, they haven't necessarily been on that journey yet. Not everyone goes on the Your Sage webpage and devours kind of the all-hands and the strategy updates in the same way as someone like me might. So, having the ability to communicate in a way that all across my teams will connect with is something I try to work on. I'm a long way from perfect on it, but you do have to be able to communicate to, I suppose, to your point, quite different profile of people and quite sometimes a different mindset. Like I say, my long-term view is those things are merging, and you can have and need more people who can do both sides of it. But for sure, there are different groups right now. 

Hannah Munro: 19:03 

And I think you've made a really interesting point because I... I see the most successful teams when they've got a mix of that very operationally focused and transformation. And then, like you say, some people in the middle that can switch, because I think that just gives you a much more well-rounded. You've got a bit of specialism, and you've got a bit of fewer rounders in there as well. So, even with smaller teams, the ones that I've seen be incredibly successful, those that have that mix of skills as well across the board. 

Unknown: 19:31 

Yeah. 

Rob Jackson: 19:32 

Yeah. So, for example, I'm just really good is my transformation lead. He's that sort of director of my major projects and innovation team previously ran the South African shared service centre. Right. And, and Etienne, hi Etienne, if you're watching, right. He is like, he's super detailed and organized that operationally. fantastic, right? But he's flipped into this other role where he's now, you know, driving our agenda around artificial intelligence, intelligent automation more broadly, plug into it. But what's brilliant about how he's able to do that is he's been able to put himself into a kind of blue-sky thinking future state, but he's always grounded in the operations of what will work and what won't. So, we don't go wandering off on a tangent of something that's just not going to work for where we are now. And that he is a good example of someone who can, who's effectively been a switch hitter, right? He can do the operational bit and now he's doing the transformation bit. 

Hannah Munro: 20:27 

Yeah, no, I totally get that because it's really interesting. Obviously, we are a big believer in diversity, even in our consultant pool, you know, people from different backgrounds, from different experiences. And what's really interesting is I do like working with some of the consultants that have actually worked in finance because they have a completely different perspective to those that come from like a data analytics or a process focused organization because they're very different in terms of how they approach things so, I think that's a good shout and I think it's also a really interesting shout to those that have got existing teams is that transformation skills can be taught as long um in terms of building that and well certainly I think so, I'll open that to yourself you know how you know do you think anybody can develop that transformation mindset or is it something that people instinctively have 

Rob Jackson: 21:18 

um So, I think probably anybody can. It's just quite a lot of people aren't open enough in their mindset to access that part of them that could do it. It's that fixed mindset versus growth mindset type thing. There are some people who just believe so, strongly they couldn't do that. that they won't try, right? But yeah, there's definitely a higher proportion of people that could do it than actually do it. And it is as much anything about mindset and being able to fuse future thinking and operational reality as anything else. 

Hannah Munro: 21:57 

And when you're working with or building your team, and I guess if I maybe start without some question, how much of your team now is team members that you brought in versus those that you've sort of trained up from previous? Like, have you got a mix or is it leaning one way or the other? 

Rob Jackson: 22:15 

So, I think I've done two external recruits since I joined two and a half years ago. And that... And actually, one of those two external recruits has since left. what would that make it? 99.5%, 99.7% of the team were already in Sage to one degree or another. I'm probably talking at senior levels. We've had some people join externally or through grad programs, et cetera, et cetera, lower down. So, I changed the team a bit. So, some people did leave. A lot of people have been promoted, and people are doing different roles than they were doing before. But fundamentally, all of that capability was there in Sage. And I think that's Certainly when I joined, that was not the advice I got, but I decided to sit on it for a bit, understand it, work with the people, try and find the right slots for people. And over time, I think that's really paid dividends because we've got a nice stable team. We've been at Sage a while, really understand the business and are moving things forward at a good pace, I think. 

Hannah Munro: 23:24 

Yeah, and I think it's really interesting, the fact that when you joined, the perception of that team wasn't of one that could go on this journey with you. So, what did you do? How did you bring them along the journey with you? What sort of, did you do coaching, mentoring, training? How did you take them on this journey? 

Rob Jackson: 23:44 

So, I'll go back to the communication piece. What I decided is I had to be prepared to be, there was some, as ever, there are kind of 10% of people who will kind of never get on board. And there are 10% of people who just on board instinctively, right? I want to do that. And they're waving their arms. They want to be part of it. And then there's sort of 80% in the middle who are to one degree or other waiting to see, right? So, I definitely went through a six-month period where people are like, all right, you know, who's this bloke talking about customer empathy and Brene Brown and like weird things like this in our finance shared service centre. And I think quite rightly, they waited to see if I walked the talk because a lot of people didn't. don't, right? And I think over time they've discovered that I tend to mean what I'm saying. And if I'm saying, you know, it's a good thing for us to take half a day off and all go do some exercise, I'm going to go and do that, and they should do it too. And various other things, they've seen me back up rhetoric, I think, with action. And I think that's what has helped us then coalesce and go from a place, you know, our employee NPS metric has risen very significantly over the two years, but it didn't go linear. I didn't have an immediate impact. Right. And it's not all about me either. It's been, it's taken a little while. We've got the team in the right place. We've got the strategy clear. People could start to see, we meant what we were saying, and we were starting to deliver. Hopefully there's still loads more to do. And, and, you know, now we've got, we've got a much more engaged and proactive team that I think we had before. 

Hannah Munro: 25:21 

And you mentioned, obviously, getting them to believe that when you say things are good, that you're going to implement them and change those. What about the skills that the individuals have? Did you have to do any development with your existing teams to help them learn the skills needed for your transformation projects? 

Unknown: 25:42 

Yeah. 

Rob Jackson: 25:43 

Yeah, and as ever in many places, training budgets are either predefined or quite tight. So, one of the things that I've put my discretionary money towards is probably two things, one of which is universal, which is the design thinking training, right? So, either accessing the stuff that Group's done or I brought in IBM to do that because that for me was a really important part Those skills, actually, they're more like facilitation skills than anything else, but it develops and accesses a different part of the mindset. And the second bit is a bit more around work I've been doing with my leadership team and in some of the teams below on communication styles of people and how to, you know, the whole red, yellow, blue, green personality type stuff. And again, I can see that. That's a bit more latterly in terms of the investment of that. I can see that starting to have some benefits. But for most of it, it's been... just allowing people to do something slightly different and letting them find their own way to do it. So, I wouldn't say that I had to do like a big, deep skills refresh. I'm sure both me and my team would love it if we could do that and we'll develop some things, but it's, you know, it's been ad hoc here, a bit of green belt here, a bit of design thinking there, you know, tools and systems training that hasn't really been a pervasive thing. I think I'd, probably be honest in saying. 

Hannah Munro: 27:18 

No, that's really interesting. So, what do you think was the successful factor? So, what do you think was the one thing or the few things that you did that have actually allowed you to achieve your transformation goals? 

Rob Jackson: 27:32 

So, I genuinely think it was the team, right? I think most things start with the team and the culture. So, therefore, it wasn't really about me. It was always there. It just needed a bit of direction pointing and focus. So, if there was one thing I think that I did, it was really clear on what metrics define winning in finance shared services. Because actually, happy teams are teams that think, whether it's true or not, right? In any case, I think it's true, but they think they're winning, right? And so, we would set really clear metrics around close accuracy and timeliness, around DSO and age debt, around payment on time. None of it radical, but none of it here before that enabled the team to see, actually, actually, we're doing all right and we're doing better. And, you know, we've taken, yeah, I think over the last two years, we've taken two thirds out of our age debt ledger. And part of that is just making it a proper focus as a metric, which it wasn't before. But it's the team that have collected that cash. It's not me, 

Hannah Munro: 28:39 

right? And do you use those metrics as justification for sort of a project? Do you use that as a benchmark and measure it before and after? So, yeah. Yeah. 

Rob Jackson: 28:50 

My team get bored of me, I think, saying I need a way to measure it. I need a way to know if we've been successful or not. And it's not so, that I can say you know so, that I can get a stick out and say this has been a failure so, we understand what works and what doesn't work because some things don't work and if you're not measuring it you don't understand whether it works or not so, yes that's why you know we're just rolling out process mining right now and you know the point of the process mining is for us to actually be able to say right we ran this initiative kind of it started six months ago now can we see that in the process mining metrics as well as our output metrics right which are a bit easier to do 

Hannah Munro: 29:36 

so, talk to us about process mining because some people that listen on this this podcast may not even understand what it is talk to us a bit about what that is how it works and why you use it. 

Rob Jackson: 29:45 

So, my analogy for process mining is it's like a visual depiction of pushing blue dye down your process and seeing all the different routes that the blue dye takes. And the answer is almost always way more different routes than you would want it to take. And whoa, why is that part of it? going over there so, many times. And so, it really helps you unlock process variations and process bottlenecks, which if you're then pushing forward to process, being really data-driven on your process improvement initiatives, we think it's going to be fundamental. There are always some things that are obviously broken, but there are some things that create noise, but actually that's more about you going and managing a political stakeholder than it is a genuine process problem. And our hope is process mining will just put a fact base on that and help us prioritise and focus our sort of scarce process improvement resources. 

Hannah Munro: 30:50 

And is that your focus? Is that what you use to decide where areas to focus on in terms of your transformation efforts? Or are there any other sort of factors that might affect which efforts you go down? 

Rob Jackson: 31:04 

I think you're naive to ever think there aren't some political factors in terms of what you focus on. And there are a whole set of strategic initiatives across the company. Last year was our internally focused on year of the customer. Actually, we were asked to think about prioritizing or process improvement and things that will be customer impacting. I've got quite a big orders to cash team, so, that's relatively easy to do in terms of there's a very easy direct link to the customer there that you can talk about. We focused our robotics and drove some cash collection initiatives and technology focus around that. We could point it at a customer strategy. You know, so, process mining will become one part of it. Some of that will always be there. But what I'm trying to avoid is us getting distracted by things that actually don't make a big difference to what we think is important within Sage and within finance operations. 

Hannah Munro: 32:11 

Yeah. And it's so, easy, isn't there? Because sometimes the decisions around where to improve can be around who shouts the loudest rather than actually where the blockages actually are. 

Rob Jackson: 32:22 

100% on what seniority that person is and who they are shouting to and what seniority of person they're shouting to. And I've, you know, I'll leave the region out of it, but I've spent a chunk of the last two weeks having to deal with an issue on a topic that really wasn't a big deal. It really wasn't, but it was being spoken about at certain levels as a big deal. So, therefore it had to be treated as one, but I didn't have the data to be able to knock it down quickly enough. So, I had to manage it from a stakeholder perspective and still am. 

Hannah Munro: 32:56 

Yes. And I think that's a really interesting point though, isn't it? Because sometimes financial transformation projects can seem a little bit wishy-washy in terms of their deliverables and what impact they're going to have on the organization. And I think what you're saying there is that along with obviously these key KPIs around operations, plus your process mining, you're actually able to have better conversations with those perhaps more challenging stakeholders because you've got the data behind you. 

Rob Jackson: 33:25 

Yeah, exactly. That's the premise at least. 

Hannah Munro: 33:28 

That's the theory. But I guess there's a lot of processes to mine and to dig into. So, how do you know when to start? How do you pick your way forwards? 

Rob Jackson: 33:42 

So, I mean, the process mining, so, we are rolling it out now, right? So, I will not say we are at that point of sophistication where it's driving everything. But I think you have to roll it back to those– what's the strategy of the business? What are the priorities of the business? So, in my area, payment on time is important and there's obviously a lot of compliance around it in the UK and we're a champion of small businesses so, particularly for our kind of smaller suppliers and our partners of course we need to make sure they get paid on time but strategically not many people ever going to talk to me about that our cash conversion and cash collection goes on the front page of our investor relations press release at year end and at half year there is a lot of focus around that so, I have to make sure that I'm doing the right thing always and making sure we're giving a good service but you're going to Prioritize your resources to the things that are most closely aligned with either strategy or the things that drive our share price and shareholder value and all of that good stuff. 

Hannah Munro: 34:51 

Absolutely. And I think those challenges in terms of having limited resource while still wanting to achieve that transformation goes all the way through. So, how do you balance your transformation efforts with your operational piece? Because resources is always scarce. You never have enough resources I don't think I've ever spoke to somebody, and they said yeah, we've got plenty of time to work on transformation so, how do you manage it what are your top tips. 

Rob Jackson: 35:20 

there's a listen to your team and that's listen to what they're saying and not saying and kind of you can tell when you're pushing someone a bit too far right I think oftentimes they won't say so, But you can kind of tell, so, I'm not sure whether this is a very good tip or not, but it's kind of, it's like, how do you find the right level so, people feel like they're moving pretty fast, but they're not going to fall over and they feel supported. And over time, they feel comfortable enough to say, hey, Rob, listen, you've asked me to do these three things. I can't do all of them. So, do you want to help me prioritize two things? out of the three which is a conversation I'm always open to but just like any selfish manager that sometimes I'm like you know maybe you can do all three let's see squeeze them? 

Speaker 03: 36:09 

in 

Rob Jackson: 36:10 

he or she says right um but you've also got to know there are times to take your foot off the pedal so, so, for example you know it was covered with various other things like last year was a tough year and we'd got to kind of August and because I'm around the world it's not all a holiday season in August and But I made an explicit point of saying, listen, I want people to take a bit of a breather in August. Now, whether that's through holiday or whether that's just through deprioritizing some stuff and protecting your work-life balance over this period, then do that. Because I know that, you know, our year end, well, we're going through that process at the moment. It closed September the 30th. This is a really, really busy time for us. And you have to have the downs to go with the peaks. Otherwise, you lose people one way or another. 

Hannah Munro: 36:57 

See, I think that's really important because I think people forget that at some point you've got to give people a break. You can't do transformation for 12 months straight. You need that pause, don't you, in between different areas to love to downtime. And I think that is an amazing tip, I think, for people to think about when people are actually going to get a break from the work and the change. You know, we don't mind doing a bit of standard Excel processing just for a little bit just to get our change back on. 

Unknown: 37:27 

Yeah. 

Rob Jackson: 37:27 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, you have to live it, right? So, I went a bit quieter than normal on the comms. I dropped some status meetings out of the calendar and stuff like that. You have to help people understand that, actually, it's all right. I'm still doing what I need to do but let me look after me for a little bit here as well. 

Hannah Munro: 37:50 

Yeah. 

Unknown: 37:50 

Yeah. 

Hannah Munro: 37:50 

That's a really good point. So, we've said, so, firstly, figure out people's limits and then watch for the things they're not saying, like you said, but still challenge when you think there's capacity. And then also making sure that you give people downtime and a chance to recover from your transformation efforts in the first place. Brilliant. Well, to be honest, Rob, I'm loving this conversation, and we haven't even got into the practical elements of running a transformation program. We've just talked about people and culture and some great, some really great stuff. And I'm hoping our listeners have got out as much of it as I have because I find it fascinating. But if you had to say for those that are about to undertake a transformation project, I'll give you three things that they need to think about and make sure they've got in place before they start. What would you say that they need to think about? 

Rob Jackson: 38:45 

What I say they need to think about? So, there's always 100% a stakeholder thing. And so, my learning at Sage in particular is, you know, try and hug IT as close as you possibly can. But also, again, my learning and my development is you can sometimes think of my IT business partner. I get on fine with my IT business partner, so, all is great. But just like I don't represent all the finance and there's tax and treasury and the accounting reporting guys. IT is multifaceted as well and being able to make sure the data architect team and the infrastructure team know what you're doing is something I probably haven't invested enough, and we've seen some transformation hiccups over my period at Sage from the back of that. So, that would certainly be one. Second would be that you've got the team that you really trust. in it. So, certainly if you're in a role like mine where you're setting multiple things off at a time, and I'm one of those people whose interest in something is very high at the start, very high at the end, and much less so, during the middle, right? You need the people who can really deliver on those projects that you can trust with your ideas and your babies lay off and do it and know they're going to do a great job. But importantly, know they will come back to you during that disinterested period from my side if there's something they need from me and won't spin their wheels off somewhere if they can help it. So, having your delivery team that you trust and that's why, you know, Consultants, I'm an ex-consultant, is an important part of the ecosystem, particularly on big transformation projects. And I would sort of include consultants and third parties that you trust in that same equation. But having some transformation capability within your own team who know what they're doing and understand your business is really, really important. And then... And then, yeah, I think thirdly, it's just understand that everything's a collaboration and a partnership and that if you keep communicating all the way through, you will run faster than if you get maniacal about anything, be that a timeline, be that particular niches of capabilities. You need to stay kind of fluid and pragmatic and understand that Better is, you know, you don't give away better in the search of perfect because my fundamental belief is everything's iterative. Now it's not about big bang, three years of declared transformation and then nothing after that. It's going to be ongoing. So, if you can get yourself a bit further up, even if it's not everything you wanted, you can come back to that via a different route later. But, you know, and certainly, you know, there've been some projects here that have stalled for a bit because we've been searching for a bit too much for perfection and could have accepted a smaller win but got there faster. 

Hannah Munro: 42:13 

Yeah, one of my mottos and phrases is search for, you know, strive for agility, not perfection, because you can end up, I think it comes with the finance piece as well. You can aim for that perfect report with every data down to the penny. And actually, what value is it being at? Is that finding that extra penny versus the 2p? You know, it's not going to add value. And sometimes, yeah. I love, I 100% agree with number three. Actually, all three of them, I think they were really great points. So, guys, go for it. 

Rob Jackson: 42:50 

I know you had Jonathan on not so, long ago. And Jonathan's a great exponent of the 80-20 rule, right? And I think that's sort of similar to the point I'm making at the end. It's like, stop looking for 100 if actually 80 is there for you to take because that's better than where we are today. And come back for that 20 later. 

Hannah Munro: 43:10 

And I think it goes back to your point about winning. If you're always holding your team against 100%, you know the likelihood of them being feeling as winners as well is so, much harder whereas actually you get the 80% and they hit it you know they're more that's actually achievable and they'll feel like they win which means they win more so, you might actually end up hitting that 100% if you know later on so, yeah no that is fabulous and we are unfortunately out of time so, I know anyone that's walking the dog is desperate to get walk back in the out and feed the dog probably so, I wanted to say a massive thank you on behalf of myself and obviously all of our listeners this has been a brilliant conversation about transformation and great to speak to somebody that's actually living the dream of finance transformation it is a dream right let's talk about 

Speaker 03: 44:06 

that 

Hannah Munro: 44:08 

so, thank you again Rob it was amazing to have you onto the show and obviously for any of our listeners would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this session because it's always great to hear what other questions and if you're very lucky I might be able to convince rob to come back on again someday and talk to us about some other areas of transformation 

Rob Jackson: 44:27 

it would be a pleasure. 

Hannah Munro: 44:29 

brilliant thanks rob.