From Dance Studio to Boardroom: A Fast-Rising Leader’s Take on Mindset, Training and Performance
“Dance gave me many things. I’ve often been called quite gritty so just keeping going until I hit a particular goal or outcome.
And I think that is something that was just naturally in me when I was dancing and trying to be better every single day. Never being put off by the setbacks, actually taking those as learnings. I think I’ve naturally taken that into my career and I take setbacks day to day as if they’re like skittles, learn from them, adapt, try something new.”
Samantha Roberts
In this episode you’ll hear about
- Synergising Strategy and Action: Flipping to action through strategic development stages to realise transformational success.
- Unleashing Innovation: Harnessing diverse minds to drive more collaborative, breakthrough solutions
- Data Empowered Transformation: Illuminating the path to progress.
- Tailored Transformation: Empowering stakeholders and your teams through personalised approaches.
- Grit and Grace: Sustaining momentum and leading with resilience, with a bit of charm and empathy thrown in along the way.
Key links
Known Unknowns
About our guest
Samantha Roberts was the General Manager – Customer Experience & Strategy for PEXA, responsible for optimising and transforming customer and employee experiences across all touch points. Over six years she helped taken PEXA from 10% market share to 90%. She’s now a Product and Leader and mentor for emerging start-ups in Australia.
Sam believes that exceptional experiences not only fuel growth but also cultivate loyalty and enhance employee engagement.
“I’ve had the privilege of developing and delivering voice of customer programs in various organisations.”
This has empowered businesses to better understand their customers’ needs and preferences.
Sam has been part of building an ecosystem of products that transformed an entire industry from traditional paper-based systems to cutting-edge digital solutions. Witnessing the positive impact of these products and services has been incredibly rewarding.
“Happy employees equals happy customers”, Sam has championed employee experience programs that have had a profound effect on the entire customer lifecycle. By nurturing a culture of customer-centricity and empowering employees, these programs have not only enhanced customer experiences but also driven operational efficiency.
With a curious mindset and a collaborative approach Sam uses her expertise in Customer Experience (CX), Product, and Technology to create memorable experiences that captivate hearts, engage minds, and ultimately deliver measurable business outcomes.
About our host
Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching & consultancy Company Road (companyroad.co).
Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.
Every team approaches transformation in their own way, also bringing in their own partners to help. And while they’re working towards the same organisational goal, it’s this over-fragmentation that stunts rapid progress at a company-wide level.
Having worked as a marketer, transformation leader, teacher and practitioner of design thinking for over 20 years, both here in Australia and internationally, Chris brings a unique, deep and ‘blended’ skillset that will cohere and enable your teams to deliver ambitious and complex change programs.
Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.
Transcript
Chris Hudson: 0:08
Okay, howdy friends. So today we’re dropping episode four of the Company Road Podcast, where we help you as intrapreneurs learn about what it takes to change a company. I just wanted to pause and say the response to me creating the show has actually been nothing short of astonishing, and I can’t thank you enough for continuing to tune in. My guest today is Samantha Roberts, customer experience aficionado and formerly GM customer experience and strategy for Pexa, responsible for optimising and transforming customer and employee experiences across all touchpoints. She also worked at Barclay’s Bank in the UK and National Australia Bank here in Melbourne. She’s also product leader and mentor for emerging startups and entrepreneurs in Australia now. She began her career as a professional dancer, so it was really cool to hear about how she applied the uttermost discipline, creative flare, and finely tuned collaboration skills to the corporate world. She’s really flown up the ranks and is definitely one to watch, listen to, and connect with any given opportunity. Today’s Sam shares a very personal take on life in business and the power of being200%tuned into the corporate environment and its personalities at all times in ways that are not to the detriment of one’s health. I might add. Creating time for the best things in life is also at the heart of Sam’s working ethos. Sam is proof that business can be fun and incredibly fulfilling when you create the right environment. So grab yourself a warm mug of something, put your feet up and enjoy Sam’s story of grit and grace and everything in between. Enjoy. Alright, Sam, hello and welcome to the Company Road podcast. I know what time of day it is, and I’m really just very appreciative of the fact that you’ve jumped on to give up your time. And we’re almost stealing the time to record now. At the end of the day we’ve had some teas and some other drinks probably. But yeah, thank you very much for joining at this at this late hour. I know it’s gonna be a really exciting and enlightening episode and I’ve known you in your more recent years probably in the work that you’ve done in CX, obviously through your work at PEXA and in Service Design. You’re doing some work in startup now as well. But I’d love to, maybe hear from you and from, maybe if you could take us back to the younger Sam and tell us a bit about where did you start and what brought you to this point in your career?
Samantha Roberts: 2:12
Yeah. So, thank you for having me by the way. I’m very excited to be here. This is like my first ever poddy. So where did it all start? For me, honestly I never thought I would be doing this kind of work So I trained to be a dancer at one of the top schools in the UK and trained in ballet and contemporary. We were in our leotard and tights every day and that didn’t quite go to plan for me. I got injured. And I was working in a bar at the time and one of my friends was a recruitment agent and she was like, don’t worry, it’s fine. I’ll get you a job. And I was like, oh great. What do you mean? And that was in a call centre at Barclays Bank working in their mortgage service team. So walked in? Was. I suppose trained in how to be a customer service agent for five weeks at that point. And that was when I just fell in love with all things customer experience service. I naturally gravitated from there to work on projects and delivery and change management. And got exposed to that side of the business. And then left the UK and came to Australia and had a bit of a soiree in project delivery in National Australia Bank as well. And then, yeah, moved on to PEXA and had a variety of roles there across product and CX in particular. And then at the moment I’m working at a startup supporting product management and helping them build out the product management capability. Yeah, so very varied. I don’t know how I got here, but it’s been a great journey so far.
Chris Hudson: 3:48
Do you think back to your time in dance and, just in terms of. Where you were then and where you are now?
Samantha Roberts: 3:55
I do reflect a lot to be honest. And I think dance gave me many things. I’ve often been called quite gritty so just keeping going until I hit a particular goal or outcome. And I think that is something that was just naturally in me when I was dancing and trying to be better every single day. Never being put off by the setbacks, actually taking those as learnings. I think I’ve naturally taken that into my career and I take setbacks day to day as if they’re like skittles, learn from them, adapt, try something new and that’s. Yeah, I think that all stems from there as well as creativity dancing a lot and being creative. It naturally comes together. So yeah, I think a lot of those things I do think about in my career now too.
Chris Hudson: 4:43
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, That, that feels like it’s a natural match almost, to have that tenacity and that rigour and that, fearlessness really built into your, into yourself as you take things on in the corporate world. But when you first started out in the corporate world, did you feel like this was your home? What was your first impression there?
Samantha Roberts: 5:02
I felt completely out of place. I was like, why? First of all, am I not dressed in a leotard and tights anymore? And why is everyone wearing a suit around me? But to be honest, I always felt a little out of place and I’ve shared some of this in some of the things that I’ve shared on my LinkedIn and with others is I never really quite felt like I fit because I came from that world that was the arts and dancing and I wasn’t from a business or tech kind of background. It didn’t always feel natural to me. But what I was really lucky is that there was a lot of people that were willing to help me, guide me, support me. Google was around. So that’s always helpful. It just really. Up until learning was something that I really enjoyed about the process. Yeah. And I still do that today.
Chris Hudson: 5:51
Yeah. And do you find that you were gravitating towards certain types of people through your career ’cause of your background in the arts? That there was there a safe zone and an unsafe zone in that respect?
Samantha Roberts: 6:03
I mean, especially towards the later years of my career, I’ve naturally gravitated to walk to more of the creative side of things, experience design all of those great things. I naturally avoid anything with numbers that’s just probably not for me, but it’s not a skill of mine. So I use and work with those SMEs as I need to. But yeah, I’m really more I think suited to that creative side of things with unlimited expenditure would be ideal.
Chris Hudson: 6:35
Talk us through some of the creative things that you’ve worked on in, in the last little while. It can be recent or in the last few years.
Samantha Roberts: 6:42
Yeah I probably try and bring a creative lens to everything that I am working on. One of the things that I feel most proud of is my time at PEXA. I was with PEXA for six years. I joined the business when they’d really made some good traction with the product and the ecosystem of products that they were putting out into market. And I joined the business when they had10%market share and recently left the business and they had90%market share in Australia and, an emerging global presence as well, which was just awesome to be a part of building. And I suppose when you join something and there’s10%market share, you have to be creative. You don’t have unlimited resources and budgets and the ability to do everything that you want to perfectly. So I think being really clear on the problem and then trying to tackle those problems in a creative way, seeking input from others, trying to break things down. I think that would be a good example of, just continuously creating what was, what we all did at PEXA, to be honest, to achieve those particular goals.
Chris Hudson: 7:52
What was your starting point and how did you come together as a team?
Samantha Roberts: 7:57
Yeah. So I think for me, always a starting point is what do the customers need, and how have we learned those particular needs? What data’s informing those needs? What research have we done to showcase the reason why people are requiring or needing particular things?
Chris Hudson: 8:15
What were some of the early days like?
Samantha Roberts: 8:17
A lot of the things that were being worked through in the very early days, you are working essentially with a lot of known unknowns. So trying to get really clear on the problems that are trying to be solved, the customer needs the specific types of segments that you are trying to support with what you’re trying to achieve is really important. And then breaking that down across the different cross-functional groups of people that, that you’re working with. Everyone from risk, legal, finance, engineering marketing, you name it. Just trying to get everybody’s input then into solutions and the way in which those problems can be tackled in the most impactful ways quickly. So the biggest thing I think we learned in the early days was that you need to move fast and move with as much impact as possible to test and learn your approach.
Chris Hudson: 9:16
Was that a learning or was that more of a directive from above? Do you feel like you were traveling at speed because it was almost expected or do you feel like it was natural to run at that speed?
Samantha Roberts: 9:27
I feel startup scale up environments are running at a pace that is great. There’s this real willingness to get things done and move quickly and try and learn and explore. And I think that the executive team in the earlier years that I was there at PEXA were very encouraging of experimentation, setting up a, ways in which you could check that what we were planning to do was gonna hit those big goals around market share, around reaching customers in a particular way. So I, I think that they were very encouraging of that approach, which was a amazing to be a part of and establish as well that continuous discovery, continuous learning.
Chris Hudson: 10:09
Yeah. When it gets momentum, it’s obviously incredible to see and to be part of. I think that particularly with the transition from startup to scale up, that can obviously reveal a lot about not only the organisation, its ambition, its vision, but also the people that sit within the organisation. Did you feel at any point, like there was almost too much change too quickly and how did you manage that?
Samantha Roberts: 10:33
Yeah, the hockey stick graphs, I’ll never, ever forget that banging of the gong as you achieve particular milestones as a team was just something I’ll think of so fondly forever probably. It was a real, it was a feeling. It wasn’t just what we were doing. It was this feeling that we all had when we were going through that particular moment. Once that hockey stick started to exponentially move and just continue up the curve of growth, yeah. Things did start to hurt. You start to learn that there’s a process that you need that isn’t there and there’s this purpose that’s getting absolutely hammered with some things. How can you start to think more maturely and at scale while still trying to fly the plane? And I think that it was a really good lesson for a lot of us to think about the business as a whole and all of the cogs and how all of those cogs needed to work together for it to be, a well-oiled experience that our customers were getting value from.
Chris Hudson: 11:33
Yeah. I think the hurdles along the way must have been frequent. It feels like you, you would’ve had the opportunity to obviously take comfort in the speed at which you were traveling obviously with the achievements and the success that you were seeing. But obviously in terms of overcoming those hurdles in the moment, talk us through some of those, was there anything that stands out as something that really, really was a niggling pain or it kept on coming up? Anything like that?
Samantha Roberts: 12:00
There’s always things that customers want. That was always something that, we were trying to juggle. But I suppose really trying to understand how you prioritise feedback coming in. What feedback is actually valuable, not just to your customers, but to your business. Is the feedback actually gonna increase market share, drive revenue, give you those business benefits as well as those things that your customers need and want. So that I think was a big learning that you can’t answer everything that comes in. But I think not just at PEXA or I’ve worked in corporates now. PEXA is a scale up environment and now in a startup there’s things that, that come up in every environment constantly. And I think it’s how you take in those moments, learn from them, and adapt or pivot. And that could be said for any environment. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 12:53
Was there something about the PEXA way that really typified your approach in that respect? Was there a type of meeting or a ceremony or anything that you felt worked as a team that you think people could learn from?
Samantha Roberts: 13:06
So there’s one particular moment that will stand out to me and it defines the, that intrapreneur moment is when the chips are down, everybody rallies around. It’s not people throwing things over the fence. It’s actually working as an entire team. And there was an issue that came up that was quite high profile and every single one of the team rallied around together. But the lens that was taken and the guidance that was given by executives was to remember who the customers were and to always apply an empathetic lens regardless of what we needed to deliver. So there was a moment where we actually brought in the customer to understand what this issue had meant to them and their life. And we were all sat there listening to, the impact that it had. And I’ll never forget that, that feeling of accountability within the room was astounding from that moment. And it was such a great learning. But from there it was like this feeling of moving at such pace because we were like, we’ve just heard it from the customer themselves, the impact this has had on them. How are we gonna fix this and how are we gonna fix this quickly? And it was this feeling of everybody coming together to make that happen. That was a moment that I’ll always, think. It wasn’t the greatest of circumstances, but it was something that showcased the power of empathy, working as a cross-functional team and achieving a particular outcome together. Something that was a great learning was that real life interaction with your customer.
Chris Hudson: 14:45
I’ve seen it work so well and bringing the voice of the customer into the business, with the organisation in some way is also very powerful. It’s interesting also to see that it’s used fairly and unfairly. In some cases the customer can be either represented well or misrepresented in some cases within the four walls of an organisation. Have you seen anything like that happen?
Samantha Roberts: 15:07
Yes. When you’ve maybe been in the customer’s shoes and you’re representing them as yourself or anyone who’s been in a product environment you go through the motions of being in love with your product, like it’s your baby. So anybody saying anything bad about it, it’s pretty difficult to handle until you learn to be able to take those inputs in and use them wisely and for good. But I think the way that I have seen it play out, many times is you can apply that lens of bias and you can, showcase the moments where you’ve been the customer yourself and you’ve not listened to a customer directly or correctly, but it will always show in the metrics when you go live. Many times I’ve seen that, things like that just don’t perform when they don’t have the right level of inputs that you need holistically. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 16:00
So, in that respect, what have you seen, what have you seen really work well in terms of bringing the customer in, just from a practitioner’s point of view?
Samantha Roberts: 16:09
Yeah. So I think from a CX practitioner point of view, the things that I’ve seen work really well are it’s not just one approach, but many. Those approaches running in parallel. So, customer panels is a great way of gathering information, but that’s not the only way in which you’re gonna be able to test and learn from a customer perspective. You’ll be wanting to look at operational data, product data, revenue and tying all of those inputs together to make a whole and see if you can challenge the data that you’re seeing in front of you as well. So I think I’ve seen it done really well when there’s a variety of tactics that are looking at things holistically.
Chris Hudson: 16:55
Yeah. And typically, from a CX or customer experience point of view, do you wanna be across all of those tactics or do you feel like it, it can be a shared responsibility within an organisation to actually see what you’re aiming at, take control of the metrics, but also spread out and do what you need to do, feed back in. Do you feel that can work as well?
Samantha Roberts: 17:13
Absolutely. There’s no way you could ever be across everything. I think it’s more about the moments that you try and bring everybody back together and share ways that you can share research that other teams have done, or the things that the sales team have learned, or the things that the tech teams are seeing. How you bring those moments back together so people have a moment to be able to share that with everybody and everybody hear different perspectives. That’s what’s important as well. Decentralisation of research is really important.
Chris Hudson: 17:42
Yeah, I think so. It feels like sometimes anyway when there are presentations, they can be quite siloed. So within research, obviously design, there are ways in which people find ways to. So to just go off and do their thing, and then they bring it back to somebody, but not everybody. And whether it’s intentional or not, there’s a lot of silo that’s being created here or there. What are some of the things that you’ve seen work really well in, in breaking down those walls and just getting the information into the right place centrally?
Samantha Roberts: 18:11
Yeah, I’ve seen it called many things, but in an old school way, the one thing I’ve seen work really well is just a simple format of a working group. Just getting everybody together every week to just run through the things that have been learned, the value that we believe they’ll provide, and how they’re gonna be, fed in for experimentation to take forward and learn. I think yeah, it is probably the old school in me, but that’s where I’ve seen it work really well. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 18:41
There’s a lot of talk actually around strategy and what happens with strategy and when it becomes actionable. And particularly as, through design thinking through the double diamond and through different stages of that, there’s talk that there’s a lot of over strategising. There’s often too much time spent in research. There’s almost too much insight to do meaningful work with because people are swimming with it you know, particularly at enterprise level. There’s just too much to deal with. How do you go about finding and extracting the right information and really pointing it in the right direction so that the right products, services, customer outcomes can be brought to life in some way?
Samantha Roberts: 19:20
Yeah, there’s no doubt that there’s so much data now. It’s hard to break it all down and it can feel very overwhelming. But I think always applying the lens of what impact is that data having on somebody’s life is an important lens. And what I mean by that is, is not just from what the customer’s experiencing, but if you are getting a lot of phone calls that you can’t handle, what does that mean on somebody’s life as well? Those are the metrics that if you shake them out in terms of everything that is in your data pool, they should really rise to the top. The ones that are gonna impact somebody or are already impacted someone. And if you did something about them, they’d give somebody time back. It would save money. There’d be a clear return on the work that you would do in terms of value.
Chris Hudson: 20:11
Have you ever made any of those decisions for it not to work? And you think, okay, actually I need to try something else really quick because this just isn’t working. When have you known that’s not, it’s not working in the way that it was meant to and you had to change it in some way?
Samantha Roberts: 20:25
Yes. When it, was it not working in the way that it was meant to? There’s always things that are not working in the way that you think that they’re going to work. And I think that’s I actually quite like failure because like I said, I tackle setbacks. I like to think of them as skittles and learn a lot from them. So I think one of the things that one of the things that I have seen that just It just didn’t work very well. And ultimately, when I reflect back on it now, what it boiled down to was a lack of understanding. Make sure that actually the way in which things are being communicated as simple and anybody can come along and pick them up and run with that.
Chris Hudson: 21:07
So let’s talk about some of the learnings of your career and maybe the biggest learning of your career so far from a project point of view, it could have been an initiative, something that you tried out. It didn’t go as planned. Yeah. There were battles fought maybe won, maybe lost. What were some of the biggest learnings that you’ve had?
Samantha Roberts: 21:25
So I suppose Some of the biggest learnings I have had is when faced with tight deadlines or complex projects, but particularly earlier in my career I reflect now and I would often find myself getting really frustrated and impatient at the pace in which things were moving and maybe somewhat, I believe that level of emotional intensity would actually propel me and others to do things faster. But really that was just a lot of rubbish and a big lesson, and actually it just at times caused chaos and it actually slowed things down. So I suppose recognising in myself that I needed to adapt my approach personally. Also my approach with individual stakeholders was a big aha moment for me. So I suppose in being more patient in those moments, I noticed a few things. The biggest thing that I noticed and learned was that being patient and things not moving, or what you felt like, things not moving as quickly. It didn’t mean that the sky was about to fall in. Nothing went, too crazily wrong. So that was a big one. But I think my interactions with colleagues changed at that point as well. So instead of being frustrated and stressed and that taking up a lot of the space, that patience actually allowed us to break things down, have more fun and enjoy the process of problem solving. But I think I mentioned to you, I have been called gritty and this I think is the flip side of being gritty. Gritty is great if you wanna get something done, and I’ll go a full pelt to get it done. But that can often mean at the detriment of being frustrated and, forgetting to work as a team, as a complete team, which is what you need to get something done really well. So I think learning that and having that moment and adapting my approach it’s not just helped my work life and help move things along. It’s helped my work life balance. I’m not taking those things home, trying to like, work out how I can get around that and break that down and keep moving. It’s actually helped me just chill out. Like it’s just, it’s all, all right being gritty, but you just gotta. Be patient as well.
Chris Hudson: 23:47
So, you’re almost giving yourself the permission to take a step back and say, it’s okay if this doesn’t happen right now, in this moment. It’s okay just to stop for a minute.
Samantha Roberts: 23:57
Yes.
Chris Hudson: 23:57
And maybe everyone else around you during that moment is also thinking, oh, thank you know, we don’t have to do it overnight because Sam’s all right with it Now is that, is describing the situation or, yeah. Yes. That, that what was that? Yeah, what can I ask? What was was there a particular moment in your career so far where that tipping point happened? Where you had you were going too fast, you thought, oh, hang on, this is just going outta control. We need to just give people a bit of breathing space here. Yeah. Was there a particular moment?
Samantha Roberts: 24:30
Yeah, it was in my last role really defining a complete transformation program. Basically everything from onboarding knowledge sales service. And I was like, let’s go. This is great. Let’s go do all this stuff and look, all this value’s gonna get. And everyone’s whoa. We, we’ve done this like this for a lot of years. There’s all these things to consider. And I’m like, yeah, that’s great. Let’s take all that input. Let’s keep going. Yeah. And that, just gotta, alright, let’s slow down, break this down. So that guidance from the team was really good to keep me honest in that moment.
Chris Hudson: 25:04
How did you know from other team members’ reactions when you were running too fast? What were they doing or saying? Or how did they react?
Samantha Roberts: 25:13
Yeah, I think their faces, they’ll probably laugh at this, their faces was a picture would probably be number one. But I think if I look back at the moment, it was probably just that the feedback was significant. It was big challenges that were being raised. It was things that if you don’t think it through, you’re gonna be faced with a number of risks and things to consider that might hurt you even more than if you, you keep going quickly. So I think it was really about taking that advice and insight from other people, listening to the feedback and trying to work out ways in which, you could accommodate that through the process as well.
Chris Hudson: 25:51
Have you. Just, just speaking honestly, have you always been open to hearing that feedback when it comes through? Or have you sometimes just tried to put it to one side and forget it, forget that you never saw it or heard it?
Samantha Roberts: 26:03
Yeah, look, I think I would be lying if I said I had listened to every piece of feedback and, I had tried to accommodate all of that. I think, especially earlier in my career when I was in full delivery mode in project management and change management you’ve got clear agendas to hit particular milestones in particular budgets and sometimes there are choices that you make that align to that rather than, those risks and challenges that are being put in front of you from broader business units. So I, I think that I have learned to Navigate those inputs in different ways. Yeah. Throughout my career now.
Chris Hudson: 26:45
You’ve been in some huge companies in affecting that change and being the catalyst for change. How would you summarise some of the big barriers for transformation and for change in some of those organisations? Do you see some of the same themes coming up? What are the things that you always see?
Samantha Roberts: 27:03
In terms of enabling transformation?
Chris Hudson: 27:06
Yeah. What gets in the way?
Samantha Roberts: 27:08
What gets in the way? I think some of the things that get in the way, I think you mentioned it earlier actually, as a lot of people strategising. And you have a balance that is more people doing strategy and strategising than people actually doing the work. And I think As much as transformation needs to be thought through, there’s things that you just need to start delivering and doing as well. I think some of the things that I’ve also seen in transformation type environments is where there’s too many people agreeing. There’s not enough diverse thinking in a room. There’s too many people nodding and agreeing, but also I’ve observed that can mean that people don’t actually feel comfortable to speak up as well. So, they nod and agree, but actually then nothing really gets done as well as a result of that. So that can be a big blocker to moving transformations along. I’m big on data and always looking at the data. Metrics are the obvious one where, you can see things are not quite working. And trying to tackle those metrics to improve them yeah, is an, is another one. But also just things just feel inefficient. There’s this things take a long time. There’s no, there’s a lot going in and a lot being discussed and re prosecuted, but nothing’s actually coming out the other side. I think that’s a big challenge for transformations as well, is to keep that development lifecycle moving.
Chris Hudson: 28:37
Yeah, absolutely Right. I think the, yeah the observation there is true. What are some of the telltale signs that you look out for, in any of those areas that you think, okay, this is just something to watch out. I don’t have to keep an eye on that and I need to be very careful because something could go wrong here. Any moment. What are you looking for?
Samantha Roberts: 28:59
Yeah, a telltale sign of something needing to change. And often what I’m looking for is I’m listening to language. So, when there’s lots of different words and different choices of words across different teams, that’s immediately indicating to me, there’s no clear strategy or vision, and there’s no common goals that people are working to that’s articulating actually that there’s lots of silos. And that’s a big red flag to me. And in that them trying to think about how can you bring people together? What opportunities are there for crossover and collaboration and unity? But where are there the chances to maybe bring KPIs together or ways in which people could support other people’s KPIs and have completely different conversations. But I’m often listening to language. And listening to whether people are saying the same thing or different things.
Chris Hudson: 29:55
Yeah, it’s a really interesting point around KPIs and almost the power or influence of an individual within the context of an organisation where it’s a community and everyone’s expected to aim for the same place, but actually the incentive structures and the pay structures remuneration all works slightly differently for each of the different individuals. So you’re saying how to bring it together, but have you been able to do that in some way? How have you managed to do that?
Samantha Roberts: 30:22
It’s hard, but often, trying to tap into and understand what other projects are in flight or commencing, what their key goals and objectives are. You might never get it to that level of KPIs, but you might land on where there’s common interests to bring things together. I think KPIs is really a very. Tricky one, but often if it’s a project or delivery or revenue or margin goals that you’re working towards, there’s someone working on something and there’s a way to bring those things together if you think creatively and big picture about it.
Chris Hudson: 30:59
Yeah. And presumably you’ve worked in organisations where customer experience is more of a department in a smaller team and others where it’s probably stretching across a number of other teams because it’s so plugged in. Have you noticed differences there in how that centralised vision is brought to life. Obviously sometimes it’s very product led, sometimes it’s CX driving it from a customer point of view. In other cases it can be tech driven, what have you noticed there? Anything along those lines?
Samantha Roberts: 31:27
So I think really the main thing that I have observed is the environments where customer experience and knowing your customer is embedded within the teams. And it’s just, natural to go and try and understand and learn more and test with your customer and that be part of the way in which you are delivering. But then I’ve also tried to implement voice of customer programs in major banks and trying to change600employees in business banking and retail banking is you cannot underestimate in that environment, change management and the approach to over communicating and bringing employees along and unfolding a particular story around this stuff. Embedding things into existing processes, it’s a completely different beast that you are working with when it’s a larger enterprise and it takes much longer as well to take that feedback and actually learn and act upon it too.
Chris Hudson: 32:29
So in some cases you’re going with the grain in other cases against it, or in the same direction, but you’re trying to add things on and it becomes very hard, obviously, because it’s been like that for a little while. There are legacy systems to change it. It feels like it’s not only enough, it’s a massive piece of work to do it, but it’s also outside of your personal remit a lot of the time as well. But have you been able to bring that change about in some way or another?
Samantha Roberts: 32:56
Yeah, so I think back to the program that we did at NAB and implementing net promoter score and customer feedback within a number of teams. And I think in some ways the work that That we did wa was great. It looked at ways in which we didn’t necessarily need to change things that were being done but we just souped up the processes and provided inputs and dashboards at particular moments in time that could improve the employee’s experience so that they could do more for the customer through the work that they were doing day to day as well. So it was more about trying to tackle it at that level than full scale transformation. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 33:39
I mean that, that word transformation, the t word, it, it does polarise a lot of people, doesn’t it? It feels it seems all of a sudden it’s just too big and people don’t understand it. Yeah. Obviously there’s a lot of anxiety that’s getting created and often there are other parties, other consultants involved in making that change possible. It’s sometimes, like you say, it’s about how you frame it. So if it’s framed as a. Almost an augmentation to something that you’re already doing or a slight tweak, then well, yeah, that’s okay. We can try that. We’ll do it in the next few weeks. Whereas, otherwise it turns into a two or three year, five year program and all has to be tied into everything that ladders up to the big corporate vision and everything that goes with it. So, yeah it’s a really good point around just taking the easy wins when you can.
Samantha Roberts: 34:22
Yeah, and you cannot, in those types of environments, large, complex, hierarchical structures, you cannot underestimate the skills of a change manager and their approach to communication over communication, unfolding a story, working with different stakeholders at a variety of levels to support the change. Like I think that was one of the major. Reasons for success was the change management approach around it. And in some ways, in a scale up or startup environment, you need change management, but not to that extent. Things happen a little bit quicker. People are willing to give things a go but the over communication, I think it applies to any environment. You can’t tell, you can’t communicate enough with some of this stuff sometimes when change is involved.
Chris Hudson: 35:14
Yeah, with change management, it’s an interesting one because I think that it’s understanding is quite shallow usually across the organisation. Most people would recognise the need for a change management function or a change manager to come in and help. But actually, it’s really mixed in terms of how they’re received within an organisation, where the level of maturity is up there. And in some cases it can work brilliantly well. In other cases it’s almost like it’s there on the side, but it’s not very really doing very much because it’s unstructured and people don’t really know how to get involved with it. So have you seen anything in that area that it’s either, when it’s well-defined or when it’s less defined? What’s working well from what you’ve seen?
Samantha Roberts: 35:51
Yeah, I mean I’ve seen a variety of approaches. But I suppose really when change management is coming at it from the lens of, when we do this particular thing, what’s the blast radius of that? What’s the impact of that going to mean to this group of people, this group of people, this group of customers, and really thinking about it holistically. And then based on that, what approach do you need for each group or team or business unit for things to be successful. So probably a lot of us think about customer experience and how you create personalised solutions in your products and services. It’s the same thing. I feel when I’ve seen it done well for change management is when you’re thinking about a personalised level around how you can support those people and teams to be successful on an, on a personalised level, not everyone’s gonna need the same plan. And that’s when I’ve seen it done really well.
Chris Hudson: 36:47
So it’s almost customised. It’s created, could be described as an experience that you’re creating within the organisation for the people that have to experience that change. cause you see this in experience design. You do a lot for the customer outside of the four walls, but inside, does it work that well? Have you seen it work well?
Samantha Roberts: 37:05
To design experiences for employees? Yeah, I have been part of programs where that’s been front and centre and I’m a big believer in happy employees equals happy customers. So thinking through at that service design level, what are the things that you are going to need for your customer to have a great experience in this moment? It’s critical, but also it’s critical to help you manage your costs and resources and risk. And thinking things through at that level is something that I’m pretty passionate about. Any of the projects that I’m on. Yes.
Chris Hudson: 37:42
Yeah. So people know when they’re on your team, because you’re managing it a certain way and everyone’s, everyone knows where they’re going with it. And yeah, people behind it, people are supportive there’s the different types of leadership style aren’t there. There, there’re the ones where it’s almost dictated from the top down, from a leadership point of view. And everyone knows that if they’ve done their job, they come back to you, they get, given another request or given something else to do. And there’s another one, which is around more followership, where, you know, servant leadership as it’s sometimes referred to where people know exactly where they’re going because that common direction has been set. What’s your own leadership style? How do you characterise your leadership style?
Samantha Roberts: 38:21
Yeah. So I would say I like to create that vision, that, that end game, what are the things that we’re striving for together? I always like to bring it back to people, whether it’s customers or employees or colleagues across the business. And I’m always thinking about how does above the line connect to below the line? How are the, how is everything gonna work in sync? And going back to my dancing days, if you’re putting on a show, how is everything going to work so that the lights can go on, the curtains can come up, and the experience is as delightful as you hoped it would be. How do you coordinate all of that? So that’s definitely an approach that I like to take, is to think, yeah, at every level,
Chris Hudson: 39:07
So in your project planning to stretch that analogy of a performance to this point, is it that you’ve got something in mind for where you want, how you want the production to be, how you want it to come across, staging, lighting, whatever the equivalent is in transformational CX. Do, do you have a very clear picture in your head and then you’re creating all of the different parts around it?
Samantha Roberts: 39:29
So, so yeah, I would say that seeing the end is something that I like to picture myself in that moment when the race has been run and you’re there and it’s all completed. What will that look like and feel like, and then try and impart that, to others and see what happens. But I think the analogy has been used before that to deliver a experiences like choreography, you need to consider everything from front of house to onstage to backstage, the rehearsals leading up to the show. Everything really needs to come together for that great experience to occur. And everybody within the organisation plays a role in that as well.
Chris Hudson: 40:10
Yeah, particularly in performing arts, there’s a self-awareness. If you’re a dancer, if you’re an actor, just from people that I know, that I’ve spoken to, you have to be aware of how you come across. And it’s not always the case for some people. They’re totally oblivious a lot of the time. So how do you get people to tune into that, that self-awareness and also, almost that self-reflection if they can see themselves, in the equivalent of the dance studio, the mirrors are out on the wall. You’re seeing how you look from an outsider’s point of view. But inside an organisation, how do you encourage that, that kind of healthy self-awareness?
Samantha Roberts: 40:46
Yeah I think so often a lot of the slides that you’ll, it’s always a slide, isn’t it? There’s always a slide and a Powerpoint pack. But a lot of the pictures that you’ll see me draw is the big picture. And sometimes it’s overwhelming to think about the big picture, but then from there, breaking that picture down into clear focus areas and streams of work that can be tackled by different groups of people at the same time. But I think what I like to really encourage is how are those groups of people looking left and looking right? How are your worlds crossing and how are your worlds gonna support each other? So creating spaces for those conversations to occur is something that’s really important to me in that planning and delivery process as well. I think it’s important to think about how you can run a lot of things in parallel, but then how do you bring people back together to encourage open conversation and collaboration and dependency management as well?
Chris Hudson: 41:43
Yeah. I see. So they see their place within the puzzle. They also see what their neighbours are doing, and it feels like a safe environment for them to be able to look over the fence sometimes and see what’s happening, and then obviously take part in any other things that are going on in at a horizontal level really.
Samantha Roberts: 41:57
Yeah. So keep bringing everything back together sharing how the work of everybody is laddering up to the goals, the common goals, the common vision and really just keeps striving towards that.
Chris Hudson: 42:10
Yeah it’s interesting. Have you seen that, you’ve worked in, you’ve worked in the banks, right? So you know what it’s like. Have you seen differences, we’ve seen different industries. Have you seen differences between, say how it works in Europe versus here in Australia? Have you noticed any kind of cultural differences in how that kind of uniformity works?
Samantha Roberts: 42:28
Yeah, it’s a good question. I’ve been in Australia now for so long. I can barely remember the early days in my career back in the uk. But I think Australia, maybe it was also a point in time in my career as well, the UK is quite different in their approach. I think that when I was there, which was now over10years ago, working in a major bank it was very formal very hierarchical. There was a process and approach for things to occur. I suppose in Australia it felt more like people were working together in a different way. More united and a bit of a community. And it didn’t necessarily matter what your role was, if something needed to happen or get done, there would, there was a genuine willingness to help. And not that there wasn’t in the uk, but it just felt less formal, less suited and booted. But I, I wonder if that’s just the time and things moving on as well. Now I’m not sure. Maybe my opinion there is pretty old as well.
Chris Hudson: 43:33
Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. That’s all right. We can move on to another one. It was the, yeah, it just take to hear talking about the team and the team dynamics and how that can all come about. It’s great. Obviously when everyone is in symphony everyone is know that what they’re doing and they’re obviously able to move in the same way. Do you ever feel through your experience that hasn’t been the case or that you’ve been, almost before that has been established. Whether you felt like you’ve been, on your own quite early on, and then you’ve had to build up allies and you’ve had to find other sources of support. Have you been in that situation?
Samantha Roberts: 44:06
Yeah I think many times, to be honest often the person agitating for change, even when everyone seems pretty settled and happy. I’m always why don’t we try this and do this? And everyone’s run quick. So I think yeah, I’ve been in those situations quite a lot and I think. It’s probably tackling that communication at a variety of levels. So how do you engage executives in a way that’s gonna catch their attention and get a level of investment that you need to get things going. But then it’s also working with those people that yeah, are champions or influencers or, you can start a bit of a political campaign and sharing the work that you want to unfold and why, and the reasons the data points are showcasing why it would create a level of value. And then there’s also tackling the people that don’t want the change to happen. So working with them one-on-one, really working through their concerns and thoughts and hearing their feedback and input and trying to build that plan and vision out with them as well so that they feel a part of it. But each one needs a different approach. And each one takes a different amount of time as well. But often, I think I touched on it earlier, a big telltale sign for me that those tactics are working and there’s many of them that are deploy, is when you start to hear the language that you are sharing coming through from. You might be in a meeting and you’re like, oh, okay, that word, yes, I was looking for that one. And it, you start to hear the language coming through in conversations and things that you’re hearing across the organisation, which is always a sign that it’s moving in the right direction.
Chris Hudson: 45:49
Yeah, interesting. You’re right, it does pick up noise, picks up momentum as you go along. What are some of the stages, just to roughly outline, you talked about the campaigning that you do from right at the start. Like what are the sort of first things you would do, if you were almost writing it out as a bit of a practitioners step by step, would it be just involve two or three people here and then you’ve got this thing happening and have you got a kind of, a plan in your head?
Samantha Roberts: 46:11
Yeah, I dunno if I ever have a fully formulated plan, but I think it starts with, just thinking through the different stakeholders and teams. That would be a good place to start. And I would always start small, so I wouldn’t invest too much before I’d had the conversation, but I’d just tackle it with, I’ve had this idea and here’s some data and let me take you for a coffee and see what happened from there and take their inputs and then probably try and build on that. Seek out a senior sponsor. Have a conversation with them. See what their thoughts and feedback are. Is there an opportunity to really push this through for investment and experimentation, or is it something that should just be, never talk about it again. Once you’ve got that sponsor, In particular an executive sponsor and they’re signed up and with you, that’s really when you get a lot of traction, I think. ’cause they’re then having the conversations at the LT level, but then day to day you can really tackle and break down the different business units and teams that you wanna bring along with you.
Chris Hudson: 47:17
Yeah. And so upwards, managing upwards and then, within your team, are you doing certain things that help them almost spread the good news and start campaigning on your behalf as well? What are some of the things you’re trying out there?
Samantha Roberts: 47:29
Yeah, so I think, yeah, trying to align different things to particular outcomes and day-to-day work reporting, data, research, trying to really test and validate and learn further and bring all of that to the surface and share that as well. What are some of the other things? So many lots of coffee, lots of lunches. It really works. It really does. Whiteboarding sessions, Miro’s, whatever it is, getting everybody in to share their, generating hundreds and hundreds of ideas. And really then working through those trying to make everybody feel involved, I suppose is what’s key, is what I’m getting at. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 48:10
And by involved you mean giving them a very clear, obviously you’ve got the outcome as you’ve described but it’s also giving them a very clear role in relation to that outcome as well.
Samantha Roberts: 48:20
Yeah and just feeling heard. So half of the time with this stuff, it’s about making sure that people feel heard and that their opinion is valued. And creating a space for that to occur is important.
Chris Hudson: 48:35
Yeah. I’m wondering that, ’cause it is hard to avoid opinion in a corporate environment, obviously. How do you process all of those inputs that you are hearing? Because sometimes, just speaking from my experience, you’re often talking to a lot of people, high level, low level, all the way in between it, it feels like, sometimes you’ve heard too much. How do you navigate some of that and, what’s going on in your head? How do you know that you’re tuning into the right conversations? Or is it just a case of listening and keeping your ears and eyes totally open?
Samantha Roberts: 49:05
I think it’s a case of listening, keeping up. And I’ve heard the saying you should have an opinion, but it should be loosely held and you should allow different data points to help that opinion evolve. So you can have a vision and you can have a particular viewpoint, but don’t be rigid. And I suppose knowing that things will never be perfect. So, starting small proving value quickly is always a way to start breaking that down and winning more support as well. Getting some runs on the board has always been a way that I’ve liked to get people in involved and excited. And once you can showcase that things do work and it is actually gonna ladder up to those bigger objectives that you thought you could bring to life and the value you could deliver? I think yeah, those runs on the board is a way to really then help get people moving at pace. They’re like, I want in driving that level of FOMO at that level.
Chris Hudson: 50:05
Yeah. Yeah. And when people are moving at pace, obviously it can be hard to stop, because you’re running at that speed, the excitement builds and everyone wants to get involved. They keep going. But it’s contagious almost, isn’t it? It feels like everyone, everyone gets behind it.
Samantha Roberts: 50:19
Yeah. It’s contagious. It is. And I think, in some ways I find it hard to specifically say the approach that I take and the steps that I take because it’s based on the different scenarios that I’m faced with and somewhat an instinct, but rather than just the steps, it’s it’s a feeling, when it’s working and when it’s not. And that’s what I’m often guided by as well. Not necessarily always theory and methodology, it’s more an instinct.
Chris Hudson: 50:48
Yeah. Okay. So it’s quite freeform in a sense. It’s taking its own direction at times. And it’s quite responsive to the environment in which you are operating. So it’s not one fixed path but it could be many. And it’s based on what you’re experiencing in that moment.
Samantha Roberts: 51:03
Yeah, but I think the key is all, it’s always many different tactics. There’s never one silver bullet. You need a few things running at the same time to really break through and cut through.
Chris Hudson: 51:13
Oh, is that because you’re hedging your bets or because you think you need to have lots going on at the same time?
Samantha Roberts: 51:20
Maybe both. Maybe both. I’m probably hedging my bets.
Chris Hudson: 51:26
Yeah. That’s okay. That’s okay. How about your resilience? How do you keep so positive? How do you keep so focused on what you’re doing? What are some of the tips and tricks behind maintaining a calm aura and just being resilient?
Samantha Roberts: 51:42
I think having fun helps. So, I’m not in jobs that are saving lives and reminding myself and others of that is, is something that I like to do. It’s important and we need to do a really good job and do the best work that we can, but we don’t need to burn out in the process. I think I’ve had a lot of great mentors and support and guidance over my career and there’s particular people that I’m thinking of right now as I’m answering this, in particular, one person who was very gave a lot of good advice around how to balance my work life and being ambitious, but not to the point that it burnt me out, but to the point that I could sustain that level of energy as well. So finding the things that really fuel me. So going to the theatre, going for dinner going to the gym, making sure that I do those things as opposed to just working all the time is something that I’ve learned that I need to keep me going as well. And then those things make me be better at work.
Chris Hudson: 52:49
Yeah, that’s really good advice. Did you try out a few things in that process? Yes. Yeah. Did you go through the kind of covid list of201things that, that, that might help me relax a bit?
Samantha Roberts: 53:01
Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve tried everything, the meditation and this, that and the other, and I think it’s really taken me a while to find the things that, I need, not just what you think you should be doing
Chris Hudson: 53:15
because it’s really popular and everyone else is doing it. Yeah. There’s fair, there’s definitely FOMO when it comes to that. And you come into work after the weekend and people are talking about what they did or what they’re going on to do after work. I think, oh, I should try that. I should try some, spinning, spinning or whatever. Yeah. Never get round to it.
Samantha Roberts: 53:34
But I have learned that sometimes I just need to take myself away from everything as well. I can’t always be bright, bubbly and happy go lucky when I am running on empty. So just having a Netflix and chill day is also a great thing. I think that balance is something that has been really good for me to find. Yeah.
Chris Hudson: 53:56
Yeah. Do you let yourself have those days at work just out of interest where it’s just, that it’s let’s not be too worried about what happens today, days?
Samantha Roberts: 54:05
Yeah. I do try and take that approach more so, now, yes. Sometimes you can’t get past the fact that it’s stressful. You’ve got deadlines, you’ve got go lives, you’ve got things that have gone wrong. But it’s just how you tackle that in the moment and break it down and and also walk away from it when you just, you just can’t move as well. Taking a step back, going for a walk outside it, it can make all the difference actually.
Chris Hudson: 54:34
How would you summarise the impacts or the things that you’ve been able to achieve through doing some of the things that you’ve just described?
Samantha Roberts: 54:40
The impact. I like to think that the impact at work is that I really care about those people around me. I like them to feel like they have the opportunity to grow and learn and explore and feel safe to explore and fail and all of that good stuff. But I feel like I’m most proud of the impact that I feel like I’ve had on other people and their careers and the great work then that they’ve been able to deliver for customers.
Chris Hudson: 55:15
Yeah. Amazing. That’s really good. That’s so heartwarming, isn’t it? But you can see. You can see that what you are doing for them has been taken on board. And obviously you’re seeing the, you’re seeing the consequences of that, they’re able just to, take something bigger from it as well from the experience of having worked in that environment. So that’s amazing. Really good.
Samantha Roberts: 55:36
Yeah, I feel like it’s become less about the work and it’s more about the people, we go to work for money and to be happy and to do things that we all feel proud of. And it’s become more about that for me in some ways. That’s what I care more about now. Yeah. I care about work as well. If my boss is listening, I care about work too, but I care about helping others succeed.
Chris Hudson: 56:04
Yeah. Fantastic. And what would one piece of advice be if you could. Say something to some of the intrapreneurs that might be listening to the show. What would you say to them in terms of driving change? Like you’ve described the innovation, some of the things that you’ve been able to do within their own organisations. What would your advice be?
Samantha Roberts: 56:22
I think we touched on it earlier, be patient adapt your approach to different people and listen to the feedback. See how you can adapt your approach to that feedback as well. But be patient. The sky won’t fall in if you don’t do it right now.
Chris Hudson: 56:42
Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sam. One final thing. Where can people find you, connect with you, say hello, meet you for coffee if they want to. Yeah. You happy to share some details?
Samantha Roberts: 56:52
Absolutely. So you can contact me on LinkedIn Samantha Roberts, and yeah, I welcome all messages. It’d be great to hear from you.
Chris Hudson: 57:01
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sam. Appreciate your time tonight.
Samantha Roberts: 57:04
Thanks for having me.
Chris Hudson: 57:07
Okay, so that’s it for this episode. If you’re hearing this message, you’ve listened all the ways to the end, so thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed the show. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends, team members, leaders if you think it’ll make a difference. After all, we’re trying to help you, the intrapreneurs kick more goals within your organisations. If you have any questions about the things we covered in the show, please email me directly at chris@companyroad.co. I answer all messages, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. And to hear about the latest episodes and updates, please head to www. companyroad.co to subscribe. Tune in next Wednesday for another new episode.
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