Authentic Achievements With Special Guest David Johnson
đď¸ Episode 35: âTransforming Challenges into Triumphsâ with David Johnson (@TurnaroundDavid) đ Welcome back to another empowering episode of Authentic Achievements, the podcast that delves deep into the inspiring stories and practical wisdom of individuals who have turned dreams into reality. In this weekâs episode, we are honoured to have a true expert in organizational change and business transformation, David Johnson, join us for a captivating conversation. đ About Our Guest: David Johnson boasts an impressive 25-year track record as a driving force behind organizational change. As an advisory powerhouse, he has stepped into roles as an interim executive and financial advisor for numerous middle-market companies navigating transitions. A true thought leader, Davidâs commitment to sharing his insights shines through his engagements as a speaker and the articles he has penned on pivotal subjects such as business transformation, change management, interim leadership, restructuring, turnaround, and value creation.
His academic journey includes an MBA from the prestigious University of Chicago and completing his undergraduate studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University. đ What to Expect in This Episode: Join us as David takes us on a riveting journey through his career, highlighting key milestones, challenges faced, and the lessons learned along the way. From thought-provoking anecdotes to actionable advice, this episode is a goldmine for anyone aspiring to navigate the complexities of business transformation and emerge victorious.
đ Key Takeaways:
â Learn how Davidâs commitment to thought leadership has shaped his career and the organizations heâs been a part of. â Gain insights into the world of interim leadership and financial advisory, and discover their pivotal role in steering companies through transitions.
â Uncover the principles of successful business transformation, change management, and value creation from a seasoned expert.
đ§ Tune In: Donât miss out on this enlightening conversation with David Johnson. Whether youâre a seasoned entrepreneur, a budding professional, or simply someone hungry for knowledge, this episode promises to fuel your journey with inspiration and actionable insights.
đ Connect with David: â Website: https://abraxasgp.com/ â Twitter: [@TurnaroundDavid](  / turnarounddavid  ) â Linkedin:   / davidjohnsonagllc Â
đ Stay Connected: Make sure to subscribe to Authentic Achievements on your favourite podcast platform for more riveting conversations with trailblazers who have turned their dreams into authentic achievements. Your journey to success starts here! đ
Connect with us online: â Website: [www.authenticachievements.com](https://www.authenticachievements.com) â Instagram: [@kimadele10](  / kimadele10  ) â Twitter: [@kimadele10](  / kimadele10  ) Remember, your dreams are within reach, and Authentic Achievements is here to guide you every step of the way. Stay inspired, stay authentic! â¨
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Transcript:
0:00[Music]
0:07[Applause] hello and welcome to this episode of authentic achievements where Iâm
0:13delighted to be joined by The Fabulous David Johnson also known as turnaround David who has a 25-year track record of
0:20driving organizational change in an advisory capacity David served as an interim executive or financial advisor
0:26to dozens of Middle Market companies in transition throughout his career David has demonstrated a commitment to thought
0:33leadership with numerous speaking engagements business transformation
0:38change management interim leadership restructuring turnaround and value creation to his credit David received an
0:45MBA from the University of Chicago and completed his undergraduate studies at fairlay Dickinson University David it is
0:52a delight to have you on the show Welcome Kim thank you so much and thank you for the kind introduction oh my
0:59pleasure Iâve been so looking forward to this because we obviously we chatted just the other week didnât we um when we were getting ready for uh getting you
1:06involved in my latest book um and I just thought your insights were were just so insightful so Iâm so thrilled that you
1:13agreed to come and join us on the show and share more about your journey with
1:18our audience so absolutely tell us a little bit more about your journey so far please so I started my journey early
1:28on I started uh research project when I was 19 that became a company that I
1:33worked on in my early 20s and that was a wonderful experience unfortunately it
1:40didnât work out but failure is a great teacher because it really does prod you
1:46to interrogate what it is that you did wrong and that first entrepreneurial
1:55experience and realizing that it didnât work out really kind of launched me into
2:01a lifelong quest of what do you do when you take a wrong turn how do you help a
2:08company steer out of that how do you help them chart a new strategic path and
2:15undo the mistakes of the past and actually kind of write a new chapter of value creation oh I love that because
2:22itâs true isnât it I mean we we sometimes think that their failure is so final but itâs only final if we allow it
2:27to be final if we instead look at from um the opportunity to learn something and to see what bits did work as well as
2:35what bits didnât work because often itâs not everything that failed is it itâs one element of it so when we absolutely
2:42highlight those bits that go these bits work so letâs do them again this bit didnât work so what can we do
2:49differently with that with that one bit then thatâs when we start to find those opportunities to change isnât it thatâs
2:56right I I think thatâs thatâs so insightful the that binary thinking this was a complete
3:03failure this was a complete success is not helpful every failure has wonderful
3:11lessons that you can learn and every success has pieces that you can say well we we didnât need to do it that way we
3:18could have gotten where we were going faster or reached higher if we had avoided this or made a different
3:24decision here I just feel like in Failure there is more time to really
3:33interrogate and think what did I did do wrong whereas itâs very hard for us when weâre successful to step back and say
3:41okay what did I do because it doesnât feel like you did anything wrong even though you could be better and I think
3:47sometimes as well you donât you I donât know about you I I sometimes am like like donât jinx it
3:54right just be grateful just be grateful thank the Lord and and donât jinx it by going and Di into it which is is
4:01obviously the wrong type of thinking because I me and my little girl weâve got a um a family mission statement
4:08which is to live a life of passionate curiosity and to pass our thoughts words and deeds through the lenses of is it
4:15kind is it honest and does it add value and if the answer is no you you change
4:21what youâre do um and Iâm trying to apply that now to the lessons which is youâve got to go and look at them youâve
4:26got to go and see not just things that that went um well look at the things that went badly so that you can now make
4:32informed Choice isnât it sure and I guess thatâs what you help organizations do isnât it is find the courage to make
4:40the informed Choice by going and looking at the details that lifting the lifting
4:45the HUD up and seeing whatâs happening underneath almost you know I think thatâs absolutely right at at the end of
4:52the day I I recognize that my clients are bringing me in and they are
4:59undergoing some real challenges but um giving people the space
5:07to kind of one understand whatâs happening because I found that too many
5:13people who do this work lead with numbers and donât get me wrong analysis
5:19is important at the end of the day especially when you need outside Capital you need to have uh a logical analytic
5:27story but there needs to be a narrative and thatâs so important for the people
5:33that were in the company for the decision makers the board or shareholders who may have been along
5:39throughout the journey what happened and why does this work and not this why is this working now but we tried this five
5:46years ago and it didnât work I increasingly spend a lot of time focused
5:53on to different stakeholders uh a different level of detail whatâs the
5:58story what whatâs the through line we were at this point weâre at this point now and weâre going here and why is it
6:06working and why didnât it work in the past I think thatâs so important oh itâs
6:11so true I mean I think that is one of the levelers in life isnât it you know relevant of our um our race or our
6:17culture we teach and we learn through stories so I think once we can get to that story and we can translate it
6:25almost so that it makes sense for the audience that weâve got so whether thatâs our employees whether thatâs our
6:32potential investors whether thatâs our Regulators you know wherever it is itâs the same story but you might just need
6:38to bring it to life in a slightly different way right resonate but I think
6:43thatâs crucial isnât it because if we can get people invested in the story um and
6:49they they then want the story to have the best outcome because theyâre invest
6:55in it then actually that works so well with your employees it works so well with your clients it works so well with
7:01um with your board with with your investors because they can see what it is theyâre getting involved in and they
7:07can see the part theyâre going that theyâre expected to play to make that um
7:12successful and I think that really allows you to take something really quite complex and make it understandable
7:19and and easy to digest isnât it I think thatâs right and as you said it Fosters
7:25buyin at the end of the day um stakeholders are differently situated
7:32and it might be difficult to get a supplier to be excited that weâre
7:38targeting 20% evital margins but that supplier can get excited that look weâre
7:44rationalizing our supply chain and I want you to be our A supplier and this means you get 75% of our business and by
7:51the way with the rationalization we think we supercharge growth theyâre excited about that so the stories have
7:59implied numbers for the different stakeholders but I do think it also
8:05creates a super structure where itâs easier to create buy in for the different constituencies youâre speaking
8:12to no I completely agree an apologies put in the dog decided good not
8:18helpful he was clearly intrigued um but I think I think youâre right itâs kind of itâs helping people to understand how
8:25they fit in why is it important to them um why should they care um and the
8:32whatâs in it for them thatâs usually the reason why theyâre going to Care isnât it I think when we take that effort when
8:38we we make those steps it starts to become a much easier ball to keep
8:45rolling doesnât it to kind of manifest so you must have learned so many things
8:50on on your journey having done this what what would you say is the thing youâre proudest of so far so um actually I Iâm
8:59not dressed down I wore this t-shirt on purpose it was a gift to me it says Mr
9:05liquidity um from the management team at a nonprofit I turned around a few years
9:12ago it was 120 year-old nonprofit that had had a single CEO for
9:21the prior 20 years that CEO was departing um and I was brought in as the
9:27interim coo to stabilize the business rationalize the management team and
9:34prepare the way for his successor and when we met every day I
9:40would talk about liquidity and these are a bunch of very smart social workers and
9:46socially minded people and they didnât know what I was talking about for a while but they were too polite to tell
9:52me so I Iâve kept this shirt all of these years because one I thought it was
9:58funny and two I think itâs a wonderful reminder
10:03that it is so easy for us especially as we get deep in our chosen specialty to
10:13forget that even though weâre speaking the same language weâre not speaking the same language I was using a word around
10:20a bunch of very very intelligent and accomplished people and they didnât know what I was talking about and it took
10:27them a while to screw up the courage to ask me and every day I put on itâs my
10:34one of my gym shirts every day I put on this shirt I smile because thatâs a nice little reminder that you have to be
10:41mindful of what youâre saying who youâre saying it too and take the time to make
10:47sure youâre clear not clear to yourself but clear to your audience I love that
10:54what a great story and youâre right itâs you I always think itâs the role of the communicator to ensure the
10:59communications landed and right it just reminds me of a I remember being in a board meeting once and theyâre throwing
11:06around that much jargon it was embarrassing um and I remember saying to them I think I know what the answer is
11:12and they all looked and I was like I think what we need is a few more tlas and everybody
11:17nodded talking about um so it kind of carried on for for a minute or two then I was like can I just ask whoâd like to
11:24be responsible for getting some more tlas um and eventually itâs one whole soul put their hand up and went I donât
11:31know what a TLA is thank you for having the courage to to say that a tlaa is a
11:37three-letter acronym and thatâs all you guys are talking about so weâve spent half an hour talking about Tâs and Câs
11:44and I know that you three at the bottom think we mean um terms and conditions donât you and they like yeah I said you
11:51three over there I think we mean training and competence they like yeah I said so youâre not even talking about the same thing right so weâve got to be
11:58really clear that we understand what weâre debating before we debate it because if not weâre never going to get
12:04the right answer are we so I think thatâs thatâs such itâs such a gift isnât it when you think about making
12:10sure that youâre communicating in a way that the communication lands for the audience not for you thatâs right you
12:18actually can have the right conversations no I think thatâs so important and very
12:23true I love it so what would you say has been the um biggest learning uh that you
12:30now Implement um regularly with the organizations that you work with so when
12:37I started as uh a consultant in the turnaround and
12:43restructuring world I was a junior uh consultant fresh out of business school and youâre really Canon father um have
12:51laptop will travel your your job is to crank up a big financial model and churn
12:58it and make sure itâs pretty and put together Powerpoints and itâs a great learning experience um you itâs
13:04certainly wonderful training but what Iâve learned over time is in a
13:13transformational leadership capacity I really have to discipline
13:20myself and my team that the opportunity cost of me solving a problem directly is
13:28enor so the things I will jump in and help
13:34with in month three I wonât do in month six and the things Iâll do in month six
13:40I wonât do in month nine and thatâs not because I canât itâs because itâs so
13:46important to build up the capacity of the organization for the team to
13:51understand that for all of us to reach our potential we have to give the those
13:59in the organization the opportunity to succeed on their own terms so Iâm going
14:06to give you training Iâm going to give you support Iâm going to give you coaching weâre going to spend a lot of
14:12time on communication and then Iâm going to let you do something that the first
14:17few times out I know I could do better but itâs itâs an opportunity cost for I
14:24can do it better but Iâm not going to learn anything I already know how to do it I need you to know how to do it yeah
14:31and skill isnât it itâs giving itâs allowing them to grow itâs allowing them
14:37to grow but itâs also the um Iâve found itâs also the Journey of a leader my job
14:46is not to be an individual contributor my job is to be a catalyst thatâs a
14:52force multiplier for all of the people in the organization so how do I make
14:58every everyone 10 or 15% better and when I think about it that
15:04way it seems less urgent and less important that I am 177% better at a
15:14PowerPoint than that person that person will get up to speed if I give them the opportunity and I really try to do that
15:21I love that and itâs so true isnât it because you know when we start out we
15:27probably went to good at doing the PowerPoint but we were given the opportunity to keep doing it right and
15:33then when we go back and we allow somebody else to step into that and and start their Learning Journey um and I
15:39think it is that you as a leader it is about making sure that you Empower
15:44people to become the best version of themselves and that involves you giving them um the opportunity to do some stuff
15:51and and it it can sometimes be hard canât it you know hard you think I could do that in
15:57five minutes itâs G to take two days you know because if I never itâs a
16:03little bit like with my little girl you know if I never let her try itâs always going to take her forever to do it so
16:08thatâs right yes it was going to take a little bit longer yes itâs probably going to be a little bit messier than if I did it myself but if not Iâm going to
16:16take away her passion for wanting to learn Iâm going to take away her desire to understand how to do it and do it
16:21better and I I used to see that in the teams that I led all the time um and I
16:27inadvertently once uh managed to really offend somebody so iâ got a really dull job of creating this spreadsheet that
16:34was really boring and I was like my team busy doing other stuff Iâll do it and didnât realize that inadvertently one of
16:41the girls who did all the spreadsheets came over and went donât you think I can do it and I was like I know you can do it itâs really simple I just thought you
16:47know youâre really busy you probably donât need to do that she but if Iâm really busy arenât you really [Laughter]
16:57busy but I just didnât want to give you a really dull job and it was yeah it was probably about 15 20 years ago but it
17:02was a real lesson for me and going I thought I was being helpful and inadvertently I was making them feel
17:08unappreciated and undervalued by choosing to do it myself rather than allowing them to do it and take a little
17:15bit longer maybe but to to learn from that and I think thatâs so invaluable in
17:21what you do isnât it because part of your role is to make sure that the organization is ready for your departure
17:27and that only happen if youâve upskilled everybody to be able to do what it is that you do for them thatâs exactly
17:33right the the change in organization youâre um youâre changing positions and
17:39youâre putting uh new people in but I have uh a philosophical approach I donât
17:48try to create a mercenary Army so Iâm an outsider and obviously if we need
17:54outside skill sets we will bring them in but as much as possible I like to promote from within I like there to be a
18:01lot of cohesion in the leadership and management ranks and I very consciously
18:10and very purposefully look at the team that Iâm building and the culture that
18:16Iâm building such that when I leave itâs not going to be disruptive I love that because thatâs
18:22your Legacy isnât it you know when we go in and we transform something we only transform it if it stays transformed
18:28when weâve gone if not we had like a little bit of an impact and then it exactly and then it disappeared so I
18:35think itâs that thatâs part of um I I was given some great advice many many years ago which Iâve tried to live by
18:42which is your job is to make yourself completely inly dispensable through competence not
18:48incompetence um but youâve got to kind of like make sure that actually it operates without you because then what
18:53you do is is you leave it in a place where itâs going to continue to thrive
19:00um because I think you in my opinion organizations are usually in one of three places theyâre either in run grow
19:05or transform um and the skill set you need to transform like your skill set is very different to the skill set that you
19:12need to just run it um thatâs true so itâs itâs making sure that you weâre putting the right people in the right
19:18roles at the right times to enable the organization to go on the journey it needs to go on and recognizing that itâs
19:25Journey um I had the great pleasure of working with a number of very talented
19:33people um one or two of them Iâve had some polite but long-running
19:38disagreements with because thereâs always the Temptation oh why donât I why donât I take a full-time role here Iâm
19:46good at transformation Iâm not the steady state person Iâm just Iâm not and
19:55I I think that I am not alone alone in
20:01that talented as I believe I am I also need to make sure Iâm picking the right
20:07situations for myself and itâs also important that in leading an
20:13organization youâre fostering a level of honesty are you the right person for
20:18this role what does the next what characteristics does the next leader need I always tell the boards that Iâm
20:26reporting to your next leader should not be like me yeah if theyâre like me we
20:32did something wrong you shouldnât need my skill set next time you should need something completely different Iâm
20:38handing the Baton to someone who is radically unlike me I love that itâs so
20:44true isnât it you Iâve it took me a long time to realize transformation was the place I play best and it was only
20:50actually once when I inadvertedly my boss thought it was hilarious I bought a
20:55pub while still running a big organization and I Chef in it in an evening um and I
21:01said itâs because I realized Iâm bored um because when I came in to do the job it needed transforming but I but I took
21:07it on as a permanent role and once it was transformed and it was just running I couldnât have been more bored if I
21:13tried needed to do something else and it was my it was my moment of realization which is transformation I love I love
21:20the problem solving I love the taking people on the journey um I live the helping them see how they get across the
21:27whatever they need to get across I said but once theyâre over there you donât need you donât need me and I donât play
21:33well in that space right I itâs not itâs not right for me so you then to your
21:39point itâs finding them the right people but itâs helping them understand that Journey that says you need different
21:44people at different points of that Journey because theyâre going to need a different a different skill set theyâre
21:51going to need and they going to need to have a different driver I think um because what drives you if you like
21:56transformation is very different different to what drives you if you like to just run a business because
22:02absolutely play in the messiest space donât we where youâve got to have the more difficult conversations in the the
22:08more the more challenging areas which isnât for everybody and I guess thatâs
22:13why people use people like you to to kind of help them on that part because it is a unique skill isnât it
22:21it um thank you that thatâs very kind I like to think that itâs rare and
22:27unevenly distributed um certainly not unique but itâs itâs so true we we have
22:34to be honest with ourselves and if the work isnât feeding us thereâs plenty of
22:41work out there to be done go find the work that feeds you I love that I think
22:46we we have to find the thing that makes our soul sing and then do our best to do it all the time um because thatâs as
22:51living our best life and itâs where weâll operate at our best because weâre enjoying it itâs itâs something that
22:58that that feeds us whereas if weâre doing things that donât um I think we can do them but we probably um donât do
23:05them with any joy for ourselves and not a huge amount of joy for anybody else
23:11thatâs interaction because you know donât you if Youâ got to do stuff that you donât want to do um right it has a
23:18different energy level with it doesnât it it really does and it itâs almost inevitable you know weâre weâre human
23:24beings weâre weâre fed by um all of these things that we do that we spend
23:29our time with and if itâs not feeding you itâs not worth it no no I couldnât I
23:36couldnât agree more so if you um had to go back and give your younger self some
23:41advice what would it be oh thatâs always a tough
23:52one I would have counseled my younger self
23:59that the most important thing and I think I kind of fell into this but I
24:05think I fought it for a while the most important thing early in your career is
24:10the experience youâre getting and block out the noise it doesnât
24:17matter what your former classmates are doing it doesnât matter whoâs posting
24:22what on LinkedIn about where theyâre at if youâve got a plan and youâre working
24:28that plan and it is what you want to do just do that and love it I ended up
24:36getting there but I I feel like looking back I twisted myself in too many
24:44emotional knots when really I was just doing what I wanted to do I just couldnât I had a hard time giving myself
24:52permission for it oh this doesnât make sense Iâm trying to get into the turnaround and restructure ruring
24:58industry in the middle of a boom no one else is doing this what am I missing I donât think I was missing
25:04anything I just found the thing I wanted to do I love that but we do so often donât we look at other people and and
25:12kind of I think we weâve created a compare and despair Society so we compare oursel to everybody else and
25:18then despair that our messy reality looks nothing like their Airbrush Airbrush Perfection we find ourselves um
25:25lacking and and I think when we give ourselves permission to pick our own goal um you know thereâs been parts
25:33of parts of my life where sometimes my goal in life is to adult appropriately for 12 hours itâs like if I can do that
25:39not goal but Iâm gonna think thatâs successful right now absolutely but I think once you give yourself that
25:46permission to say Iâm pleased for everybody living their goal um but Iâm
25:51not going to compare it to mine uh because thatâs their life itâs not my life and I think sadly we learn it too
25:59late in life we it kind of comes back to like why didnât I know this when I beat
26:04myself up for like 20 years because I wasnât going fast enough or or being um
26:11being seen to achieve the things everybody else wanted to achieve itâs like when you look back my friend bought
26:17me this actually the other week and which I really loved it was a little quote on it saying I didnât realize we were making memories I just knew we were
26:24having fun um and love it because itâs like youâre right at the time you donât realize what youâre doing is creating
26:30creating the memories youâre going to live for the rest of your life at the time youâre just youâre perhaps not as present as we could be because weâre
26:38weâre rushing to somebody elseâs goal right once we realign ourselves to our
26:43own goal itâs like you start to really get present to the moment donât you take advantage of the of as you said itâs the
26:51journey I think sometimes we worry itâs the destination and we miss out the fact that the true Joy comes in the journey
26:58that takes us there because not Everything feels like itâs in our favor but eventually we realize it was the
27:04lesson we needed to learn that allows us to develop to be who weâre supposed to be well thatâs exactly right and I I
27:12also think that one of the one of the traps of our society is that um
27:20especially when youâre young and talented and ambitious it seems like
27:25your career is going to be a series of brass rings but when you get up close
27:31you start realizing that the time in between those um those hits of
27:40endorphins stretches out itâs itâs not youâre not going to have a test every week or no oneâs going
27:47to celebrate your outcome of that particular test so at some point youâre going to have to love the journey
27:55because thereâs going to be a year where youâre doing stuff but if itâs a
28:03two-year gig youâre there thereâs no brass ring at the end of that not in the year and
28:11as it stretches out I think it kind of at least for me really forced me to think about what am I doing this for and
28:19what is it that I like because Iâm not necessarily just doing it for a win just
28:26doing it for accolades the way you can fool yourself that you are when youâre younger when the
28:31feedback loop is so much quicker I love that thatâs so true isnât it because as you as as we do get older
28:39we we those those gaps between the feedback become so much greater and therefore youâve got to find that bit
28:45inside you that you get the strength to keep going and you get the motivation to
28:51keep going because youâre like you know you want you want to be on your on your A game and look at it now my little girl
28:56six bless than not and thereâs nothing in the world she wouldnât do for a
29:02sticker and I I look gr and itâs the same itâs the same for all of our friends like I donât to do that Iâll
29:08give you a sticker and it reminds me of like thatâs
29:13what it was like when you were younger you got those accolades came so much faster the feedback was was there and
29:18actually itâs probably the thing that we lose more as you know as we as we get older and as we get more seier um
29:25because you know if youâre the CEO of something where do you go for that feedback because youâre not going to
29:31tell anybody got problem in case the board loses confidence in you you canât tell your direct reports because theyâre
29:38looking to you for the answer so so kind of where do you go and unless we get better at seeking it out what happens is
29:46we become our own Council and that can have positives and negatives I mean
29:51brain s surgeons canât do brain surgery on themselves for a reason youâve got not got the right persp perspective have
29:58you when youâre looking inward on yourself versus having somebody else hold that mirror up for you and help you
30:04see what the rest of the world is seeing itâs itâs true one of the uh most
30:11frequent points I make in coaching um newly Advanced members of my
30:18leadership team is I just remind them leadership is lonely and thatâs
30:25okay so Iâve made it a practice to sponsor uh a weekly lunch for my leadership team
30:33they donât always take me up on it but theyâre they thank me when they do Iâm not there Talk Amongst yourselves
30:42because no one else is going to understand it the way you do youâre all at the same level youâre all in the same
30:48company you can speak to your loved ones for a little bit and theyâll theyâll
30:53humor you but after a while youâre just talking at them and theyâre getting bored you can talk to me but Iâm your
31:01boss so you might not be comfortable and you can only talk so much to the people that report to you to your point at a
31:08certain point itâs just not appropriate itâs so important to build that Network and that support structure so that you
31:14can keep doing this as long as you want to because otherwise um you put a very
31:20nice spin on it sometimes being your own Council works but a lot of times it doesnât yeah oh I love that and I love
31:27that you that you take that initiative with the team because by doing so even
31:33though youâre saying not everyone takes you up on it what youâre doing is demonstrating to them how important it
31:38is that they also take some time right because I think thatâs often the thing that we that we donât do for ourselves
31:44is it is take those moments itâs like no nobody factors in thinking time itâs
31:50like you you have to think about some of these things you have to be creative youâve got to thatâs an important part of us developing the the business and
31:57doing stuff and you know I I had one organization I worked for where literally they were back toback every
32:02day in meetings itâs like whenâs anything get done sure just keep having conversations
32:10about the actions that youâve not got to yet because you canât get to them youâre in meetings for like the the entire time
32:17and like Iâve not thought of that I like youâve got to factor in some time to think and some time to do as well as
32:23some time to talk because if not you can have great conversations and nothingâs going to change um because youâre not youâre not kind of
32:29taking those activities David I could literally chat to you all day if you had
32:35um one last bit of insight to share with our audience what would it be so Iâve
32:41been kicking around the this idea um for a
32:48while I feel like there is a state of the world in which business
32:55transformation is thought more more highly of and we aspire to reduce the
33:01failure rate of companies by 5% and the radical value creation
33:11outcomes and social outcomes of just that change would be enormous weâve
33:18gotten in this space where we think that we canât change something thatâs
33:24pre-existing we have to start something new and history tells us that that is that
33:32line of thinking is not going to get us where we need to go as a society and for
33:39the betterment of our individual goals so Iâm really focused itâs my lifelong
33:46passion to just drive uh awareness and a sense of the
33:52possible of business transformation and really change how we think about it stop making it a dirty phrase and really
33:59start looking at it in terms of no this is what we should do you should recycle
34:04and companies that are in a transformation spot should invest in that rather than walking away I love
34:12that itâs so true because as we said at the start of this episode so much is in
34:18the lessons itâs in the learn isnât it itâs in looking at what went well as well as whatâs not going well and I think sometimes when we get when
34:24organizations get to that place where theyâre facing a transformation um they stop seeing the
34:30stuff thatâs working um because all they can see is the problems whereas people like you can come in and say these bits
34:36work letâs turn the volume upon on those right these donât work letâs change them
34:42but actually isnât everything needs to be thrown out itâs itâs a case of letâs looking at you know what bits how how do
34:49we take the Lego apart and repl and rebuild to make it actually fit for
34:55purpose for what weâre doing right now versus we just give it all away because that would make such a massive impact on
35:02um on the economy and on society wouldnât it and given the impact that that has at every level if we just
35:11didnât assume everything was so um easily disposable
35:17right I love that um so D David how can people get in touch with you so um I can
35:24be reached on LinkedIn my Twitter and Instagram handle are both at turnaround
35:30David and I can be found on my website um AB axas gp.com perfect we will make
35:40sure all of your contact details are in the notes below um for people that are
35:45listening and watching this thank you so very much itâs been a joy as always and
35:50I look forward to next time Kim thank you thank you for the time take care y
35:58a