.jpg)
Business of Endurance
Previously called Tribeathlon, The Business of Endurance is a podcast aimed at connecting endurance sport with personal and business advancement.
Hosted by Charlie Reading and Claire Fudge, the show provides a comprehensive approach to success, drawing inspiration from athletes, coaches, and motivational figures in the endurance sport domain.
With a diverse range of subjects being covered – from fitness strategies to business advice and life lessons – the discussions are designed to inspire not only athletes or entrepreneurs, but anyone pursuing growth in their personal or professional life. 40-minutes every Wednesday is all that's required to gain insights into how the tenets of endurance sport can shepherd success in business and personal development.
Business of Endurance
Frameworks for Leadership Success: Transforming Your Approach To Business With Chris Brindley
Today’s guest, Chris Brindley MBE, isn’t just one of Britain’s most decorated business leaders, he’s a master of sustainable success, resilience, and high-performance thinking.
Named “Britain’s Best Boss,” former Managing Director at Metro Bank, and Chair of the Rugby League World Cup, Chris brings boardroom wisdom forged in the fires of elite sport.
In this episode, Chris reveals the thinking frameworks that separate leaders from managers, how marginal gains transform teams, and the untold stories behind building world-class performance cultures.
If you're a business leader, coach, or endurance athlete looking to sharpen your mindset, this conversation is gold. Think Diary of a CEO meets the discipline of a sports psychologist - with no fluff, just actionable insight.
So whether you're running your business or a marathon -this is how you endure, lead, and win. Let’s dive in.
Highlights:
- Brains Over Hands: Why leaders get paid to think while managers get paid to do.
- Postpone to Perform: Inside the Rugby League World Cup crisis - tough calls, athlete-first values, and delivering the most inclusive tournament against the odds.
- Values to Unanimous: Turning a split board into one voice by anchoring decisions in purpose, inclusion, and the athlete’s perspective.
- Beach Ball Thinking: Replace right-vs-wrong with right-and-left. Walk around the problem to see every colour before you decide.
- Conductor Leadership: Let go of the instrument, organise talent like an orchestra to create consistent, world-class performance.
- 3 Revolutions, 3 Cs: Tech, People, and World Order - leverage technology for heavy lifting to create Capacity, build Capability, and grow Confidence.
- Outside-In Banking: Make it easy to be your customer - longer opening hours, instant cards, suspend/reactivate features, and measuring “ease of doing business.”
- Balance the Scorecard: People × Customers × Process before Profit - build the service-profit chain and balance life with the Wheel of Life reset.
Links:
Connect with Chris through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brindley-mbe-9584075/
Please Subscribe to Business of Endurance on Apple Podcasts, leave a comment, and give us a 5-Star review.
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
That's when I realised that managers get paid for the hands and leaders get paid for the brains.
Charlie Reading:Welcome back to the Business of Endurance podcast. This is the first episode of season 10. Who'd have thought? 10 seasons, wow.
Charlie Reading:And today's guest, chris Brindley MBE, isn't just one of Britain's most decorated business leaders. He's a master of sustainable success, resilience and high performance thinking. Named Britain's best boss, former managing director at Metro Bank and chair of the Rugby League World Cup, chris brings ordering wisdom forged in the fires of elite sport. In this episode, chris reveals the thinking frameworks that separate leaders from managers, how marginal gains transform teams and the untold story behind building world-class performance cultures. If you're a business leader, coach or endurance athlete looking to sharpen your mindset, this conversation is pure gold. Think Diver CEO meets the discipline of a sports psychologist, with no fluff, just actionable insight. So, whether you're running your business or a marathon, this is how you endure, lead and win.
Charlie Reading:Let's dive into the episode with Chris Brinley MBE. Do you know what? When we look at the back end of this podcast and we see something really interesting, we see that 57% of the people that regularly listen to it haven't hit the subscribe button. So could I ask you a quick favor before we dive into today's episode, if you're enjoying Claire and I bringing you amazing guests, not asking you for patronage fees and not jamming the podcast full of adverts, then the best way you can help us continue to do that and make it even better is to hit that subscribe button. And here's my promise to you when you subscribe, we'll make it our mission, along with the team that supports us, to continue to improve this podcast every week. So thank you so much for your support and for being a part of the Business of Endurance community.
Charlie Reading:Let's dive in. So, chris, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast, really looking forward to chatting to you. I know that, having listened to you on other podcasts, and that we're going to have some very similar ideas and concepts on certain areas we're going to talk about, so I'm really looking forward to diving into that. But I wanted to start by because you've been named the Britain's best boss and you've led the Rugby League World Cup, which we've also talked about with John Dutton, and you've also been transforming Metro Bank's culture, so you've clearly thrived under pressure. So I'd like to start by understanding what's the most challenging leadership moment you've ever faced and how did you turn it into a story of resilience and growth?
Chris Brindley:Great question, Charlie. Thanks to you and Claire for the invite. Delighted to be a guest today, I think without a shadow of a doubt the.
Chris Brindley:Rugby League World Cup 2021,. It didn't take place in 2021, which I think was the reason for the test of resilience. As many people know, covid came in March 2020. And I remember we were at a board meeting, a two-day board. It looked like we were going to get locked down and this was March 2020. And I remember early indications suggested it was only going to be for a few weeks, maybe a month, and we all went well, that's great. You know, we've got 18 months before kickoff, we'll be fine. This is a blip along the way.
Chris Brindley:As we all know, covid was a lot longer and a lot more serious. The challenge was we got to a place whereby we were 100 days to go to kickoff in 2021, and we still hadn't got all the participation agreements signed. And, in particular, the two leading nations in the world, both men and women, and that was Australia and New Zealand they had concerns about travel and sort of going back to home after the tournament and their governments had a very different approach to ours. Less than 100 days to go, john and I got a communication saying that both Australia and New Zealand, men's and women's, had withdrawn from the tournament. So we'd got every contract in place, every venue in place. We'd got other nations ready to travel, both men and women, and also we were running a wonderful wheelchair tournament. And the reality was we had some big decisions to make as a board and as an exec team, and that was do we cancel the tournament? We sunk a lot of money into it. We'd been wonderfully supported by government. We then thought do we postpone it? But we didn't know how long COVID was going to last or did we decide that we were going to carry on without Australia and New Zealand? And all the board had different views at the outset and it was a real test of bringing people together. The fact that we'd started the journey ultimately meant that we were not going to cancel it.
Chris Brindley:I think our decision-making conversations were around the importance of athletes representing their country in a World Cup. I'd never played professional sport, but in talking with people about either the Olympics or a World Championships or a World Cup, that's the pinnacle of people's career. For example, we'd got teams from the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea that were due to play in a women's tournament. We had Brazil. It was the first time a South African nation would have ever taken part in the tournament and I think we decided it wasn't the job of an administrator to withdraw hope and the ability to represent your country on the world stage, so we made the decision to postpone it for 12 months.
Chris Brindley:The reason that needed resilience was every contract became null and void, so having to try and renegotiate contracts, some of which were lost. Some venues that were available in 2021 weren't going to be available in 2022. An example of that was Anfield. Anfield had planned building work during the Qatar World Cup, also knowing that we were going into 22,. We were moving from space in 2021 where there were no other major events that year.
Chris Brindley:In 2022, we had the Euros that had been postponed, some of the big games being played in Great Britain, we had the World Gymnastics Championships, we had the Qatar World Cup and we were trying to attract customers' interest and attention in a year that was a crowded year for sport. And then we also started to look at the financial impact. We refunded over £1 million worth of ticket revenue, most of which never came back the following year. So it was a financial impact. And then, when you looked into 2022, the reality was we'd seen a change in the economic situation. You know, base rate had started to go up. The cost of gas and electric had started to go up. As a result of base rate going up, mortgage payments started to go up. So, from having a healthy economy going into the postponement, the economy moved against us and that proved to be a real challenge.
Chris Brindley:There were lots of different factors which tested our resilience, charlie, but the reality is we delivered the biggest, the best, the most inclusive World Cup that the sport has ever seen. The number of teams, the number of athletes. We introduced Wheelchair Rugby League to a whole new audience, live on the BBC. We had a sell-out final for the wheelchair. We built a purpose-built court inside manchester central. We're the only sport ever to have held three world cup finals in a space of a 24-hour period in the same city.
Chris Brindley:And there's a wonderful picture at the end of the men's final, which australia won, where the gillaroos, the australian winners for the women, and also england that won the rugby league wheelchair world cup, were all on the pitch at Old Trafford at the same time. And again, it's a picture that made history and made us feel very, very proud and that sometimes, when you get there, you realise that it was all worth it without a shadow of a doubt. Whilst it tested our resilience, we were proud to be part of what we wanted to do, which was to make a difference to the communities in which we serve, and rugby league served as a vehicle for that, and there was some special moments. So, yes, it was tough, yes, it stretched us, but you know, there's no achievement without challenge brilliant, and I think so.
Charlie Reading:What's amazing about that story is that you created arguably the best rugby league World Cup of all time from a very, very from you know, from a more difficult position than ever before. What was it about? The mindset of the people? Or the values? Or, you know, what was it about the board that allowed you to get to the point where you turn a really difficult situation into delivering something quite amazing at the end, Charlie?
Chris Brindley:we. We had a board meeting to decide what we would do whether we would postpone, cancel or carry on and John had done a ring round in the morning and found out that we we had a split vote. Usually when you get a split vote on a board, it becomes the chair's decision, and I was the chair and I remember saying to John that that cannot happen. Not that I was afraid of making the decision, but the story would have been more about the split vote and the chair casting vote rather than actually the decision we made, and often people sometimes forget. Behind it were athletes, were backup teams.
Chris Brindley:The women in Papua New Guinea rarely leave their island, so to create a moment whereby they would come to a different country, experience a different culture.
Chris Brindley:We had Samoa, we had Tonga that played out the most amazing quarterfinal, and I remember saying to John I'll ring round now and I talked to each board member about our values, about being inclusive and therefore the importance for me of the tournament going ahead. We talked about let's view it from the athlete's perspective rather than our perspective, and whilst we had our frustrations, I can't imagine anybody more frustrated than an athlete that has trained for a number of years for a World Cup, wanting to represent their country. So we talked about being bold and brave that was one of our values. We talked about being world-class. We talked about being inclusive. We talked about being authentic. Those were our four values and, ultimately, I believe, we were given the privilege of organising the tournament. So, therefore, we had a really good discussion as a board and, instead of it being a split vote, it was a unanimous vote. They were postponed for 12 months and we would go again.
Claire Fudge:It's amazing to hear like you know the turnaround and when you were saying about you know athletes having to wait that amount of time, I didn't realise actually, until you said about you know women in Papua New Guinea. They would, you know, they wouldn't have left usually. So to come over and you know and have this stage to be able to play on just amazing. Thinking about leadership and managers I've heard you talk before about you've said in something I've listened to, leaders think and managers do. Yeah, what does that mean so for people listening? What do you mean by leaders think, managers do?
Chris Brindley:Well, it's not original. This I'd recommend to all viewers and listeners to look at the work of humphrey walters. Humphrey walters worked with clive woodward pre-2003 rugby union world cup victorious campaign for england in the men's world cup of 2000. I invited humphrey Walters to come and speak to our team and one of his opening slides was about managers and leaders. And the word manus is Latin for hands-on, so manager is hands-on, which is, you know, getting into the detail, and leader L-A-E-D-E was Latin for the root ahead. So therefore that's when I-e was latin for the route ahead. So therefore that's when I realized that managers get paid for the handles and leaders get paid for the brains.
Chris Brindley:My first ever job player was printing checkbooks in a bank. It was, you know, the entry role. Nobody actually asked me about strategy or or what. What did I think? I was given a load of checkbooks and told to print them. So I'm pretty sure that my early days was hands-on and just managing my own expectations as well as my own workload. But I do believe that is the best example that I've ever had in my career from Humphrey, and he's got a great book called the Little Book of Winning and it is little but it's powerful, and that, for me, was always how I would talk to people about. We get paid for our critical thinking and ideas are free. I know we'll come on to the subject of ideas a little bit later and therefore, even if your job's hands-on, I do still ask you questions about what do you think? How could you make it better? So that's the reality behind it.
Chris Brindley:On a leadership journey, I talk about leading self, leading others and leading a business, and everybody's a leader, because everybody has the privilege of leading themselves, how they choose to behave, how they choose to interact, how they choose to speak to others, and then you get the privilege of leading others. You know, if I had a pound for every time I met somebody who just got into their first management or leadership role who said, chris, I just wish everybody would think like me. And the reality is they don't, because we're all different. What your job is, perhaps as your first leader, is to get people to think about the organization, about the customer, about colleagues, about the future, about learning, about continuous improvement. So therefore, that's's then not leading others. And then, when you start to lead a business, actually you're so far away from the process.
Chris Brindley:In many occasions and I had the privilege of being the managing director for NatWest for the north of England and Scotland. There's over 5,000 people in our team and I never once served on the counter, claire. But as the managing director I was responsible for every transaction that went on in the 435 outlets of NatWest. I couldn't do and I couldn't physically serve every customer in every branch, but I needed to think about how every customer got served, got served well, we engaged them, we gave them the right amount of money, we did the right projects, all of that stuff. So for me I've been through that journey of hands-on at NatWest right through to being responsible for every transaction. But I physically couldn't do it, so I had to then think about how best to get it done through the team that I had in play.
Claire Fudge:I'll come on to another question, actually in a minute, but to do with your apprenticeship at the age of 40-something. I think, which was really interesting to listen to. I'm going to ask you something about that in a second. But how would somebody then go from, I guess, changing their mindset a little bit from kind of this managing and doing to really kind of more of a thinking mindset?
Chris Brindley:I've got a group of people together in a couple of weeks and we're going to the Royal Northern College of Music and the reason being is I talk about leadership in the same light as a conductor of an orchestra. So we are going to learn conductorship for two days and the reason I say that is the conductor doesn't play the instrument. And often I say to leaders not, it's not about how many other people's jobs you can do, it's about how do you organize your resources that are available to give a really great performance, and that, that, for me, is the skill, and it's hard for some people to let go. They trust themselves sometimes more than they trust others. But again, one of the insights I sit down with people, claire, and share and ask is if you go back to your first ever day at work and it might be for some people 16 or 18 or perhaps 21 if they left university I ask the question if on that first day at work, somebody handed you your in tray and your inbox that you currently have today, how good would you have been at doing it? And I suspect not very good would be the answer, perhaps overawed. So the question I ask is how have you grown to the point where, on that first day, you didn't feel competent, to the point now where you're really doing a good job and the answer is you've probably had some really good training. You've probably had a good coach or a good mentor or a good boss. You've probably messed up a few times, but you learned from it, so that's okay.
Chris Brindley:How do we learn from our lessons? We've probably had a culture of learning. So, again, I remember my time at British Gas and my engineers were on the road a lot, and I just suggested that perhaps we can use that time on the road whilst travelling between jobs, maybe to learn, as well as listen to Radio 1 or Radio 2 or whatever. So I think there's learning opportunities right throughout your lifetime and your employability. So for me, that's how you change from doing to thinking, which is allocate some time to think, use opportunities to learn traditional learning, but maybe learn from others as well, learn from your mistakes and as a result of that, that's when your brain's a muscle. So the more you exercise the brain, just like you would your arms or your legs or your heart, then why wouldn't you choose to have a really smart program for making your brain the best and fittest and most useful?
Charlie Reading:it can be. I think that's brilliant. I'm a massive advocate of this, and it's not just about the leader being learning and growing. It's about instilling this all in your team, isn't it? How do you create a culture in businesses that you've worked in? How have you created a culture where people are learning and growing and there's that drive to be better?
Chris Brindley:I think I talk about the future an awful lot, Charlie, because that's where we're going to spend the rest of our lives, and the future typically has an element of unknown, but also it does have an element of known as well. So for me, I always talk about the difference between being employed and being employable, and your employment can end at any time through no fault of your own. I do a case study on Woolworths. When Woolworths went bust and they made tens of thousands of people redundant, it wasn't necessarily an individual's fault and it wasn't because they lacked learning. The organization just didn't do what it needed to do to stay afloat. So I talk about employability because I think if you've got employability, you're likely to be employed forever, and therefore I break down people's performance into personal qualities like resilience, like timekeeping, like a desire to learn, flexibility, plus whatever technical skills you might need for that job. And then I ask people to then consider where consistency comes in. And the very best elite athletes I've ever seen or worked with they have a high degree of consistency of both personal qualities and technical skills. So therefore we talk about how consistent, and that is about practice, it's about coaching, it's about observation If it's good enough for an elite athlete. It's good enough for the workplace. So I talk about the benefits of being the best you can be.
Chris Brindley:I talk around. There'll be somebody else in another organization who is prepared to develop themselves for an opportunity that may arise, for an opportunity that may arise. And if you don't, and you come up against that person for a job, I believe that if they prepared better than you, there is a strong chance they will get that job ahead of you. And when I present, I always use the same slide at the end. It's the same final slide I've been using for 20 years and it's a quote by Seneca.
Chris Brindley:And Seneca was accused of being a lucky general and he got frustrated with that. So he addressed all his fellow Romans and said luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and I think there's the opportunity for everybody to be better at who they are and what they do. Sadly, some people aren't prepared to do the hard yards of learning. They'd rather watch TV. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'd rather learn a bit more about leadership, about performance, about motivation, and motivation is something that I again, I spend a lot of time with individuals talking about what's their motive for action. That's, you know the definition of motivation and why would it be good now to start something that in six, eight, 10 years time they might have a wonderful opportunity? And because they've put that preparation in, they'll be in poor position to take advantage of that opportunity and all it brings them.
Charlie Reading:And the other thing that kind of occurs to me as you're talking about this is growth is one of our six human needs. So to be truly happy, we need to actually feel that as an individual, we're growing. So not only do we benefit because we're in a position to seize the opportunity when it arises, but we benefit because we're in a position to seize the opportunity when it arises. We're actually happier along the journey because we ourselves can see ourselves growing.
Chris Brindley:Charlie.
Chris Brindley:I mean when I talk to people about self-esteem, self-belief, self-concept, I talk about those small achievements that we all do.
Chris Brindley:I remind people that in the early months of our lives we achieved one of the biggest transformation programs ever is when we moved off four limbs to two and, and you know, and we wobbled a bit, we fell down a bit. We used support mechanisms like a sofa or a wall. Perhaps other people helped us by holding two hands, but the motivation was either I've got an elder sibling in there on two limbs and I want to follow them, or there's a shiny thing somewhere higher than where I can reach and therefore I want to reach it. And suddenly we're motivated at a really early age and that's a huge sense of achievement. So I think those small senses of fulfilment and self-achievement, I think we should recognise them and often we take them for granted and we forget that we've been through an awful lot of change in our lives. So when somebody says change, it's not something to be fearful of, it's something to be embraced because it has really enhanced our lives Brilliant.
Charlie Reading:Now one of the things I've so I've listened to a few different interviews of you in the lead up to this and what I loved and what I really connected with was that I've heard you refer to quite a few different frameworks along that journey, and I think for people in business, it's really powerful to understand why is framework thinking, thinking using frameworks, and why is that important? How does that help you solve complicated problems? So I'd love you to explain why you think thinking in creating frameworks is powerful, but also for you to give us an example of one where you use it regularly in your business or life.
Chris Brindley:So frameworks help because I think it's a start point. I regard myself as a pracademic. I get Hertzberg's theory of motivation and I could do a lecture on it, should I want to, but most people on me want the practical application. That's the prac bit. So often. What a framework will do is it means you've not got a blank piece of paper. It means you can start writing some headings down.
Chris Brindley:So one that I use all the time is Ken Blanchard's model of situational leadership. And what Blanchard says is if you've got somebody in your team who's not performing at the level you want to do, you have a diagnostic toolkit, and he says in the book don't prescribe before you diagnose. And I see a lot of bosses who actually make their mind up what the issue is without asking any questions and, even worse, not even listening to the individual. So how they then could prescribe the right solution, I just don't know. And what Blanchard says is there's four stages you just want to explore with every individual Stage. Number one is knowledge. What's the chance of somebody being really successful in achieving something if they don't know what to do? Well, I'd say it's almost zero. So wouldn't it be a good idea if somebody's not done what you wanted them to do, if you checked if they knew how to do it, and that I find it really simple to find out. If somebody knows what to do, I think you can ask them how would you do this? You know and I've worked in two banks and we took all that assurance, testing. We'd sit there and this situation, this scenario could you tell me what the process is? Could you walk me through it? When I was younger, my children were younger gave them quizzes. They got none out of 20 on the Green Cross Code. I'm hardly allowing them to go out the house and cross the road on their own, am I? Because they don't even know what to do. So first of all, can you just check that they know what's expected from them and they know what process to follow? Secondly, blanchard says if you know what to do, have you got the ability to translate the knowledge into skill.
Chris Brindley:So after knowledge comes skill. And often people can tell me what they're going to do, but under a real life situation. Perhaps they've not rehearsed the process enough times for them to be able to execute it in a real-life situation with a customer. And the way to find out if somebody's skillful is to observe them and give them feedback. And again I go back to what I see in the world of elite sport. Athletes are obsessed with feedback. It can help them shave 0.01 off a swim or a run, and that's the difference between first place and sport. You know, feedback's a gift and it's free. So observation of somebody and then helping them with that skill I look at. You know, sheffield won the USPGA last night and Rory won the players and as a result of that they've got coaches. And if it's good enough for the best in the world, then it should be good enough for all of us to get to be observed. And again, I think some people judge somebody's performance on the result without actually seeing the performance. So how can you feed back when you've not seen whether somebody opened a conversation well handled objections, well negotiated well?
Chris Brindley:Blanchard calls knowledge and skill competence. He then draws a line that says if you've got somebody that's knowledgeable and skillful but they're still not performing at a high level level, what you might want to explore is their levels of confidence. And when I look at sport, what I often find is elite performers. They've got high levels of knowledge and they've displayed in the past high levels of skill, but the reason they're not performing is because they've lost a bit of confidence in themselves or the teammates or the tactics and what I get.
Chris Brindley:I can observe people for confidence. I can have a chat with them about how they're feeling and often if somebody's low on confidence, what they need is a good listening to. If you don't do the diagnostic, what you end up getting is a good talking to. If my confidence is low and I get a good talking to, or worse still, is my confidence going to get any better? Probably not. I want somebody to remind me that when I was at my best, this is how I perform and explore with me how I get back to that feeling. So that's the third part of the diagnosis of confidence.
Chris Brindley:Then the last bit if you've got somebody in the past that's been knowledgeable, skilful and confident, the reason they might not be performing is lack of motivation. Maybe they just don't want to be where they are today, maybe a family member's really poorly, maybe they've got a concern outside of the workplace, or maybe they just don't like it here anymore. And often again, when I speak to professional footballers, these can be some of the very best footballers in the world that just don't have the motivation to play for that particular club or that particular manager. So there's the framework. I have a diagnostic straightaway that goes knowledge, skill, confidence, motivation. It just enables me to follow the framework, and how I liken it is either tools in a toolkit.
Chris Brindley:So I worked at British Gas and my engineers a set number of tools and they knew how to use each one really well. They used some more than others. And then when I talk to golfers, golfers know the elite golfers have got 14 clubs and each one of them has a different function. So I then start thinking maybe my toolkit for leadership is blanchards model. My organizational design is charles handy's gods of management. For people strategy it's ricey's recruitment, induction, competence, excellence and succession. So all the frameworks do is allow me to have a start point and then and go. Will this tool help me do the job I need it to do? Flexible? And I spent a day watching glass blowers in morano, which is an island just off venice. The tools that those glassblowers used, charlie, were hundreds of years old, but these were real craftsmen and they knew how to use the tools. So for me the model is a tool and you don't need that many. Funnily enough. I don't mind which coaching tool you use, but just use the one and master the one I use.
Chris Brindley:Grow by John Whitmore. What's the goal? What's the reality of where we are now? What are the options to get from where we are to where we want to be? The W is the will, the what, the when and what can get in the way. You know, matthew Syed, in his book Bounce, talks about the power of practice and the myth of talent. And again, just get a tool that you're comfortable with using to create the outcome that you want. So that, for me, is the power of models. It just gives me a start point around the blank piece of paper so I can then start to think around the tool and work towards the outcome I'm looking for.
Claire Fudge:I think the idea of a framework also for that person that you may be coaching, or the athlete themselves, having them be able to know where they are in that process as well, and their understanding. When you, when you've used frameworks in the past, where do you think your use of like modeling and framework has really benefited you? So, in a situation that was, you know, particularly sort of high stake, where have you really used one of your frameworks? Where has it really benefited you?
Chris Brindley:Claire, I'm smiling because when, when you hold a global tournament, you have an observers event where you invite people from other sports to come and discuss how the tournament is, how you've prepared for it. And we had ours on the Friday before the wheelchair final, which was the night, and the men's and women's finals, which was a doubleheader, at Old Trafford. And I always remember bursting out laughing as the chair of our Risk and Audit Committee, mike Pearls, walked into the room with a huge beach ball, and I mean a big beach ball, and I laughed because when we were talking about the tough decision around postpone, cancel, cancel or carry on, I talked about a beach ball with everybody, and the beach ball is a framework that the beach ball's half red and half white. In this instance, and often, what happens is somebody will be stood in front of the white part of the beach ball and somebody else will be stood in front of the red bit and somebody comes along and says what color's the beach ball? One person sh will be stood in front of the red bit and somebody comes along and says what colour's the beach ball? One person shouts white, the other shouts red. Then people say no, it's not white, it's red and then to go no, no, no, I don't know what you're saying. Of course it's red. No, it's white, no, it's red. And eventually people just dig the heels in, convinced that they're right. The reason talk about the beach ball is, before we shout louder, can we just go for a walk around the beach ball in its entirety? Because what you'll find is it's red and white.
Chris Brindley:And my experience of life is, if decisions are not straight, red or white.
Chris Brindley:So therefore want us to walk through the beach ball and ask why somebody sees what they see, and that might be their experience, it might be a qualification, it might be what newspaper they read and therefore they formed an opinion. So when we had situations where I wanted people to listen, to respect alternative views, even if they were different from their own, I would walk in with a beach ball and that was a symbol for us to do more listening and reflection and understanding. I'm a big fan of Gandhi's quote. You know, first seat to understand. So one of the questions I often ask is what makes you say that? I always say the opposite of right is left. Some people think the opposite of right is wrong and people will go you're wrong. No, no, no, no, no. If you see red, I believe that you're seeing red, even though I might be seeing white. But funny enough, walking around the beach ball and being prepared to listen to an alternative view, I think is one of the real skills of leadership.
Claire Fudge:I love the idea of just walking in the beach ball. I mean, what a great idea of red and white. And also your idea of right and left, not right and wrong. I really like that. Working in the world of nutrition, people often ask me you know, is this a good food or is it bad food? And I always talk about there's like no good and bad. You know there's different situations, so I really like that idea of thinking. You also talked quite a bit when I was listening before this podcast about different models. So particularly I was listening about the three revolutions that you talk about. What are these three revolutions?
Chris Brindley:Claire, I was blessed in 1996 to be in the audience at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham and the speaker was a guy called Jack Black, and I don't mean the American actor. Jack Black is the founder of Mindstore and I can only give credit to jack for the three revolutions. But this was 1996 that's almost 30 years ago, and it made a huge impact on me and you know jack still on linkedin and youtube and stuff like that and I would really would encourage people to have a look at the work Jack does. I call it mental architecture, that's my language. Jack Black said the future is going to be different from the present, which is different from the past. The three revolutions he shared that day was number one technology revolution.
Chris Brindley:Now, if you were talking technology revolution in 1996, as he was, we were in the really early embryonic stages of the internet, never mind Zoom, teams, uber, ai, all of that stuff algorithms. So he talked about the technology revolution and where I've applied it in business, claire, is I think technology is wonderful, particularly around doing the heavy lifting, what that means. If technology can do the heavy lifting for individuals, that creates capacity for individuals and therefore, if you've got some capacity, why not use some of that capacity to build your capability, so become better at who you are and what you do. And, as a result of that, the three C's of capacity capability. The third C is confidence. So that whole bit I always ask. The question is can we use technology to do some of the onerous tasks, some of the tasks that humans perhaps get wrong or aren't particularly motivated by doing so? It creates drudgery. I do look at technology now, and you know, the first mobile phone was the size of a brick. If you look at technology now, not only is it a phone, it's everything but a phone. You know, my daughter rarely rings me. She'll WhatsApp me, snapchat me, instagram me, everything else me. And then, on top of that, I can listen to music, I can take photographs, I can look at some files, I can do my banking, I can order a cab through Uber, as I've said. So the technology revolution is wonderful and therefore we should embrace it.
Chris Brindley:The second revolution Jack called it the consumer revolution. I've probably winded it now to people revolution, both customers and colleagues. When I grew up, if I wanted to go shopping, claire, I'd have to be careful, because the shops would be shut half day Wednesday, half day Saturday and all day Sunday. And if I wanted to buy something other than from a shop I would have had to have had a catalogue, a paper catalogue, at home. That was for money poor people in reality. But you now look at consumer now and you look at artisan bakeries, you look at bespoke coffee shops, you know. You look at Pret-a-Manger that had a vegan brand. So suddenly the consumer has moved from almost this block thinking into real individual thinking and we've got the rise of influencers, so understanding how people think and behave. So my recommendation to any business is just just get in once every few months a behavioral psychologist to talk about how your customers might be thinking about behaving and how different they might be behaving going forward than the past. But also some of your colleagues, whether that's a, an Alpha, a Gen Z, a Gen Y, you know baby boomers. So I think there's a lot more differential in our approach to the workplace, but also a differential in our thinking about how we purchase. When I was growing up, the environment wasn't a consideration in my buying habits. Yeah, I've got a young daughter. She makes her purchasing decisions based on an organization's approach to the environment, to social impact. So suddenly that consumer-struck colleague revolution I think is worth being mindful of.
Chris Brindley:Then the third one is the world order revolution. Usually world orders were pretty easy, but it to predict your world order changes at a micro level. If you get a new next-door neighbor or you get a new boss. It's never the same. It's always different, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but it's different and that's at a micro level, a macro level easy to predict in the future. In the past, we had a general election every five years, the presidential election was every four years and you sort of went we'll just roll with it. If you look at, we had brexit I think it was 2016. We had covid in 2020 we came out of covid pandemic and into a, a war in europe for the first time since the end of the second world war. Then we've had a cost of living challenge and suddenly we're seeing unrest in the Middle East. So therefore, suddenly people talk about perma-crisis. Now that's the world order. And then on top of that, you've got the role of individuals. So I look at Greta Thunberg. If somebody would have said 10 years ago that a Swedish schoolgirl will have a greater influence on the environmental movement than the president of any established country, I'd have gone, really, but she has, and she does. So. The world order.
Chris Brindley:I look at how people consume goods.
Chris Brindley:I look at aggregators now I buy my insurance via an aggregator because they do all the heavy lifting using the technology, and my behavior now is to go and get the best deal, but instead of me having to go around 30 or 40 different insurance companies, I just go to one that happens to have a meerkat as a front and therefore it enables me to save time and make an informed decision, because time for me, claire, is a commodity.
Chris Brindley:I don't let people steal my money and I can assure you, I don't let people steal my time either. So this is how people are starting to think differently now in the world. So that's the three revolutions, and it really is just being prepared, because they do change lives. And you've got a choice you can either be ahead of the curve because you're thinking about that, or you cannot think about it and it might define you. And if I look at the likes of a walrus or a kodak or a blockbuster or a nokia, when I do my research, it usually boils down to they didn't understand the three revolutions and it defined their future, whereas the best organizations are always thinking of the three revolutions, and I think apple and amazon are great examples of that I really love this framework.
Charlie Reading:we've got a couple more frameworks in there. We've got the three Cs and the three revolutions, which I love. But I wanted to try and drill down on this principle and say, well, armed with that knowledge from Jack Black, how did you go about using that framework when you were managing Metro Bank, particularly within the tech let's focus purely on the technological revolution how did you use that at Metro?
Chris Brindley:Well, let's be really clear, Charlie. There are some wonderful technical people and I'm not one of them. So it goes back to leadership and thinking. What we did really well at Metro Bank is we decided that our culture would be outside in. What do I mean by that? It meant we will take a look at ourselves from the outside, as our customers do, and we won't just stand in their shoes. I could stand in somebody else's shoes, but the question is, could I walk a mile in their shoes? And that's different.
Chris Brindley:See, inside our organisations they tell the customers what they're going to get, whether they like it or not. Let me give you a real example of that. Of all the executive people I've met in the insurance industry, the banking industry, other utility industry, never once has anyone produced me a letter from a customer that's been sent into the business that says I'm really bored with human beings answering the phone immediately. I insist. You install an automated voice system which keeps me waiting for 35 minutes whilst telling me that my call is really important to you. See, that is inside out. No one's asked for it, but you're getting it, whether you like it or not. Right? And even more bizarrely, these companies have values that say we put the customer at the heart of everything, we do. No, you don't. You're lying, you're lying to yourself, you're lying to your customers. Right, and the reason they do it is because it's a cosplay. Okay, it's a cosplay, but at least be honest with people, don't take us for fools.
Chris Brindley:So at metrobank, we wanted to be outside in, so it was all around. How can we be better for our customers? So example is we opened at eight o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night. Why? Because customers told us that actually, opening at nine o'clock meant they were usually in work. Shutting at 3.30 meant we shut before they left work. So then what did we do? Well, we allowed you to go in at lunch times. What did banks do? Give staff lunch times off, so we had less people and more customers. Well, no wonder people queued. So if we did 8 till 8, typically we had no control of when the bus and the tube arrived. So therefore, let's be convenient, let's open on bank holidays. I remember one bank executive said to me you can't open on a bank holiday. Well, I can, because it's a self-imposed holiday. The only legal requirement is I don't open on Christmas day and I don't open on Easter Sunday.
Chris Brindley:So we chose to open bank holidays, and the one that I think was the best leadership decision we ever made was when we started to look at why people complained and whether we could do anything about it, and one of the most common complaints was mislaid my card, and you cancelled it immediately after I've spoken to you, and then sod's law is when you cancelled it, I've then gone home and found it in my jacket pocket or another bag, or, if you're a student, you probably found it in the bar the last bar you were in the night before, and what that we realised is that cost us a lot of money in reissuing cards, but it caused a lot of customer frustration. So our IT team went away and said let's see how we can solve this. And they solved it by creating a system where you could suspend the card from being used to make sure that people's funds couldn't be accessed improperly. But if you found it, you could phone us up and reactivate your card, or you could do it through the app, and I remember one bank six years after we. If you found it, you could phone us up and reactivate your card, or you could do it through the app and I remember one bank, six years after we came out with it, did a big TV advert as if it was brand new. We'd been doing it for six years at Metro Bank and that, for me, is how you use technology.
Chris Brindley:We printed our cards in store and I remember one banker accused me of being inefficient because he said we can produce a card offshore cheaper than you produce yours in store with your machines. What they didn't add on was the postage cost to them sending out the card in one envelope your pin. That wasn't your pin, so you had to go and change it anyway in another envelope, whereas at metrobank, if you opened your account in store I think we did 75 of all accounts within 15 minutes you got to pick the pin number you wanted and before you left the store we checked that your card was working. So you had your pin in your card in your pocket within 15 minutes and we could replace one immediately within 15 minutes as well by walking into any metro bank store. Going my car doesn't seem to work. Even to this day, most traditional banks still say your replacement card will be with you in three to five days. I don't remember any customer wanting three to five days wait time.
Charlie Reading:If you were, you've obviously got a huge amount of experience of the banking sector. If you were managing a bank today in the world of challenger banks like Monzo and Starling and in a world of AI and technology moving at lightning speed, and in a world of AI and technology moving at lightning speed, what do you think is the next step for that sector with regards to technology?
Chris Brindley:I think it's just got to be as user-friendly as possible, and I use FaceApp now, which is really helpful. It's got an added level of security or biometrics. I'm always amazed when I look at retailers, how much stuff is left in the basket. So people go through the process of working out what they want. You then put it in the basket and then paying for it is the hardest possible thing in the world and as a result of that, you get suddenly pissed off and you go right, that's it. I just can't be bothered.
Chris Brindley:And the amount of stuff that's left in the basket, it is really, is really hard for retailers to understand. But what you've got to make it easy to pay, that's what I want to do. I just I've made my decision. Can I pay? So fulfillment is probably the the banner word I'd use, charlie, which is how can you make it easy to do business with you? And what's great is, as well as net promoter score, which is the can you make it easy to do business with you? And what's great is, as well as Net Promoter Score, which is the traditional customer measure. Now there's some really cool companies that ask the question on a scale of 1 to 10, how easy is it for you to do business with me from a technological perspective, and I think that is the better question for the future.
Claire Fudge:I think it's an interesting area because it's just growing so quickly, isn't it as well? And I think you're absolutely right in terms of make it easy to pay. I think about Christmas, when you're buying so many different things and, honestly, if I have to put my car details in, I go somewhere else. So I think, yeah, you've got to make it easy for sure.
Chris Brindley:Absolutely.
Claire Fudge:I want to learn a little bit more about. You know you've worked, obviously, in high performing sport with Olympic athletes We've talked about rugby and also with major corporations. What's the greatest lessons you think that you've taken from this world of elite sport into business, and also vice versa?
Chris Brindley:OK, if I take elite sport into business, claire, it's this one. If I can simplify a cycle for an athlete, I always see elite athletes warm up. They then move on to the next stage, which is peak performance, and it's the quality of the warm up often that dictates quality of the peak performance. Then, after peak performance, all the elite athletes I've ever seen and worked with always warm down. And then all the elite athletes have a period of quality recovery time, known as QRT, and they do that process because they need to be consistent in terms of performing at the highest level. So when I looked at that model, what hit me right between the eyes, claire, was wouldn't it be great if every single meeting in business followed that process? So now I go into organisations and say how do you warm up for meetings here? You see, a lot of organisations have meetings without agendas. Imagine saying to an athlete I want you to peak perform when at? Oh, I'm not going to tell you. What do you want me to do to peak perform? I'm not going to tell you that either. Who will be in my team? I'm not going to tell you that either. So wouldn't it be great is if part of every organisation had a warm-up checklist, so you send the agenda out in good time. You have real clear objectives about what the meeting is trying to achieve. Any associated papers are actually sent out in advance, so those people perhaps have a more reflective nature, are able to consider it. Those perhaps that want to ask any subject matter experts in their team who aren't going to be in that meeting, they can actually ask them to produce evidence. Wouldn't it be great if every individual attending a meeting had three questions for every agenda item as to how can I understand more about what we're trying to achieve? But no, people just rack up and often, if they're in the same building, they have the temerity to rack up late. In sport, if you're late, you probably won't be performing in the squad and as a result of that, you might not get a place in the squad ever again because your replacement takes it.
Chris Brindley:Then I look at peak performance. I've sat in meetings where I believe that the objective of certain individuals was to get through the meeting without saying a word and then, as they walk out of the meeting, they go. That was a shit meeting, wasn't it? I can't believe we made that decision and I'm sat there going. But you were in the meeting, you had the chance to contribute. So what does peak performance look like?
Chris Brindley:I believe everybody should speak in a meeting. I think it's the chair's job to engage those quieter, to seek their views. Just because you're quiet doesn't mean you're stupid, and often in meetings you've got the noisy ones that pile in first every time and I'm going, can you come in fourth, fifth or sixth so I can get to understand what other people are thinking? And then we should make sure we're going along, we really understand who's responsible, what's responsible? Then the warm down should be about reaffirming who's responsible, what's responsible, what deadline, what the actions are, and then this is the key thing for me giving people time in that meeting to distribute any actions to anybody else in their business. Because what happens is if you don't have that time and you have this horrible concept of back-to-back meetings, you get to the end of the day.
Chris Brindley:If you've had five meetings and there's three or four action points, you've got 15 to 20 action points to distribute. When do you do that? Well, my experience is people do it when the kids are in bed. They've had the tea, they log on at eight, nine, ten o'clock, at nine, start sending action points around. I don't think that's good for any colleague. So so if you did that, as you went along in the meeting, you had a warm down session. The great news is people receiving your action requests at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock during the day can help prioritize what needs doing and when. And then the evening should be qrt, which is quality recovery time, and even during the day, between meetings I talk about have a 15 minute slot where you refuel, rehydrate, go to the and actually start warming up for the meeting. That's ahead.
Chris Brindley:How you can have back-to-back meetings, which is you leave one meeting and rush into another and have mental capacity to be able to do that effectively. I don't know. You would not ask a marathon runner the minute they cross the line to go right. Can you just run another one now please? It doesn't work in elite athletic performance and I don't understand why it should in business. So that's what I learned from sport that I think business could have.
Chris Brindley:What I think sport could learn from business is the balanced business scorecard, because people think it's all about performance. It's not. Performance is an outcome of doing great things. So if you want profit, don't focus on profit. Focus on your people, focus on giving a great experience to customers, focus on having really smart processes it's called internal quality quadrant and make sure that all of those three come together to give such a wonderful experience for colleagues and customers, known as a service profit chain. Actually, great experience equals people doing business with you on a consistent, sustainable basis, full enough. That's how you're profitable. Your people are not only happy, they're loyal, and then they're committed. So, as a result of that, your staff turnover drops. As a result of that, your happiness score. As a result of that, you develop people. As a result of that, customers get consistency. So, for me, paul could learn a lot from the Balanced scorecard in business, and business could learn a lot by having the peak performance model as its structure for meetings.
Claire Fudge:I just love the idea of this warming up, peak performance, warming down and then this quality recovery time and I'm definitely with you Background as a dietitian and sports nutritionist is absolutely 100 percent, is absolutely 100%. You know, you talk about kind of having time to drink, having time to have something to eat, and also that relaxation, that time away from people and different people may need to walk, you know, outside the office and come back. So I really, really, really like that idea. I'm sure, charlie, you've probably got some input on the second part of that, because I know you teach a lot about a scorecard as well, don't you?
Charlie Reading:Yeah, I completely. You teach a lot about a scorecard as well, don't you? Yeah, I completely agree. So we talk a lot about the successful business scorecard and knowing your numbers and ultimately, that's you know. I would say I apply the same approach to my sport, which is which is triathlon, and you know, historically that was looking at my numbers along through training peaks. Nowadays it's using a more ai based approach, but absolutely it's. You know what. What gets measured, gets done, doesn't it Charlie?
Chris Brindley:it's not new to us. Often we think that some of these concepts are just well beyond me. I always look at a scorecard like I look at a dashboard in a car. I don't need to know how the engine works right, and I never will but guess what? Looking at the dashboard tells me how many miles I've done, how many I've got to go, whether I've got enough petrol, whether I'm below the speed limit, above the speed limit. It has some warning lights and, funnily enough, they're red, just like a red, amber, green scorecard. So I sit there and just get people to realise that in everyday life these concepts are around them. So I talk about translation rather than change. Go, it's just. It's just like your dashboard or your camera. They go, so it is. I go, there you go. So if you should devise a dashboard like your car for work, what would it look like? And fully enough, you come back with this brilliant dashboard scorecard. I go there, you go. That's what scorecard is. Yeah I.
Charlie Reading:I completely agree and it's and equally. It's why what I loved when I started getting to triathlons was this training peaks just give you three numbers, it's like three dials and if one's off, then you've got a whole load more data that you can go and look at equally all. Initially you just look at the top line three numbers, and I think somebody once used the analogy that I I was similar to your car one is is when they went into the cockpit of an airplane. There's dialss everywhere. How on earth do you look at all of those? And they go well, I don't. I just look at these five dials, but if that one's off, I look at these other 20. And if this one's off, I look at those 20s. So, absolutely brilliant.
Charlie Reading:One of the things that you champion is physical activity through greater sport and through Her Spirit, and I love listening to you on the her spirit podcast. Actually, it's a. It's a great podcast. I know. I know the ladies behind her spirit. I said to them at a time I'm never quite sure whether I'm supposed to be listening as a guy, but but it's a really great podcast. So I do. But how do you personally maintain health and and vitality? What? What advisor would a world of advice would you give to? Other leaders are thinking the same thing. We're nothing without our health ollie?
Chris Brindley:absolutely nothing, look, I've. I've got one goal in life and that is to be the world's best dad, and that isn't me being buried in a cemetery anywhere. So, number one, my motivation is always to be around my children and my wife, elaine, and be healthy. So I talk about mind, body and fuel an awful lot, and that's what her spirit has taught me. So I'm always thinking about how do I stay sharp mentally? So I've got an early morning routine that gets me mentally warmed up. I always have citrus fruit with hot water and a tablespoon of honey as my first drink in the morning, because that's important to me. I exercise.
Chris Brindley:I will get off at a tube station or a bus stop, one before my destination. I'm always getting steps in. I walk upstairs, less downstairs, because that has a different impact on my knees. I I walk an awful lot. Ideally, if I can my schedule allows it I'll be early morning rowing or cycling. So I'm always thinking about you know how can I make sure that I'm the healthiest I can be? I have my annual assessments. I have lots of blood tests, always checking. I'm 60 now, so I'm always making sure that I am in good health, because if I'm not, I'm not sure I can help others. And then the last bit again from a Jack Black story. Jack Black has a technique for creating energy. I won't spoil it for people, but I've used the technique now for a long, long time and I and I have a permanent tank of energy, always full and ready to go well, now you've made me want to ask what is it?
Chris Brindley:look at, look at, look at jack's website, but it's a lovely.
Claire Fudge:Left us on a hanger there it's a love.
Chris Brindley:It's a lovely example of neuro-linguistic programming meets positive thinking, meeting your power of your mind. And henry ford had a great quote if you think you can or you think you can't, you're absolutely right and therefore that the whole energy thing is premised on garbage in, garbage, garbage out, because all your brain is is just a wonderful necktop computer and you wouldn't want your desktop to be full of irises and old operating systems, so why would you want that in your head? So, what you put in, make sure it's good quality stuff and, as I say, thank you to Jack Black for giving me a lifelong tank of energy.
Claire Fudge:Well, we'll have to go and have to go and listen or watch that, definitely. But I'm 100% behind what you put in the tank is very, very important in terms of what you get out and high performing. If you could just leave one idea, or perhaps for you one system or framework, if you could leave that behind for other generations to inspire them, what would that be?
Chris Brindley:gosh, what a great question. I still would revert to the balanced business scorecard, and the reason I say that is because it starts with the word balanced, and I think one of the lessons for life is balance and equilibrium. So always look to do that. Whether that's work life, whether that's family, whether that's birthdays, there'll be that's family. Whether that's birthdays, there'll be days where it goes. I need to put it in at work.
Chris Brindley:When I was at NatWest, I did a video. I was very clear. I wanted every parent of a primary school child to be able to see their son, daughter attend sports day, and you didn't need to book special leave for it, I just wanted you to go. And if you didn't need to book special leave for it, I just wanted you to go. And if you didn't have young children of that age but you had a passion or an interest that meant a lot to you, then again, I wanted us to demonstrate the utmost flexibility to allow you to be able to do that without booking days off for a couple of hours. Why? Because I wanted it to be two-way. I wanted to be flexible with my colleagues. I knew I'd need days where I needed them to be flexible with me and maybe stay a little bit longer or do a shift over a bank holiday and stuff like that.
Charlie Reading:So I think balanced business scorecard and you can apply that to life as well. I think that is tremendous and I think we've talked about it a few times. I think the mistake that a lot of people make, particularly around goal setting, is they set, you know, they're very structured in that they set goals for their business and then they wonder why their relationship at home is falling to bits or they didn't spend the time with their kids or their health has slipped Because, guess what, they didn't have any thought or goal setting or process around those other areas. Is there any tangible kind of advice you'd give people as to how they do that?
Chris Brindley:I'm going to go back to Jack Black, jack Black. Jack Black introduced me to a wonderful concept called the Wheel of Life. If you Google Wheel of Life, anybody watching or listening it's wonderful. Basically, it's a spoke of a wheel, and each spoke is something that's important to you, whether that's health, whether that's relationships, whether that's spirituality, whether that's personal development, and basically you score yourself on a score of one to ten. One being I'm absolutely crap at this and it's not going the way I want it to be. Ten is absolutely perfect and, spookily enough, when you add all the different spokes together, you have the most zig-zaggity wheel you could ever imagine. And the reason being you go, and that's life.
Chris Brindley:So if I'm a tenant something, but my relationship scores too. What if I dial down money? What if I had less money but better relationships with my family, actually? So what I encourage people to do is, if they've got a partner, get the Wheel of Life out separately, each fill your own in and then come together and compare scores. That is the stimulus to some wonderful conversations about why somebody's put that score, and then have an action plan in that, if you are weighing too much at the moment, you're overweight and you're worried. You're healthy, suffering. Therefore, you might score yourself a two or a three. What actually might you do to make it a four, five or six?
Chris Brindley:And, as a result of that, you start putting down a series of actions. I've met people who are very rich but got no relationship with the children and it breaks their heart because that video has been made versus. You know. I don't think anyone will ever have on the tombstone a wish to spend more time in the office, you know. But lots of people say I want to spend more time with my children and that's all about being present in the room, not just, you know, being in the room but still answering your emails for work doesn't help making Making sure you take good holidays and stuff like that. So, yeah, Wheel of Life is quite a common thing, but Jack Black introduced me to it and I do my Wheel of Life every three months because life changes and there'll be some just really good reminders to carry on doing what you're really doing well and you're enjoying. But where areas tend to have got a lesser score and it's concerning you, it's a really good reminder to take action. Fantastic.
Charlie Reading:That's brilliant, and I couldn't agree with that more. We always ask people on the podcast for books that they find themselves recommending to others regularly, or books that help them on their journey. You've already recommended a couple already, so I got Humphrey Walters' the Little Book of Winning, and I also love Matthew Syed's book Bound, so it's a brilliant, brilliant book. What other?
Chris Brindley:books have made an impact on you on your journey, or do you find yourself recommending regularly? I'm an obsessive reader and I do read. I don't listen. I get a highlighter out and I sort of scribble all over things the people at the library. Don't let me do that, charlie. I have to say so. I'm not in the habit of buying them and do it myself.
Chris Brindley:There's an author out there called Royston Guest. Royston's done a great personal book called Rise and he's done a great business book called Built to Grow. So I'm a big fan of Royston's. Good to Great by Jim Collins is my go-to book. Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People Really. Bill Walsh the Score Takes Care of Itself, which is all about just doing the right activity and the outcomes, sort of like indicators because you've done the right lead indicators. You know what they Don't Teach you at Harvard by Mark McCormack. I think that's just a great book.
Chris Brindley:You look at other ones. Think Like a Winner Yehuda Shinar, who did some work with Clive Woodward. So those are probably. You know a lot of books, any Patrick Lankoni books. You know Dysfunctional Teams and Leadership. So I think there's lots out there. One tip I'd give everybody, though, charlie, is I haven't got the best attention span, so 240 pages of a book is a challenge for me personally. So I am a subscriber to Executive Soundview that does an eight page book summary and it tells me all I need to know in the summary, and if I really like it then I know that I'll enjoy the book yeah, so you know that's another way of using time smart.
Chris Brindley:I call it triage. I don't need to get 50 pages to realize it's not me. If I read the eight-page summary, I've either picked it up and don't need to read the book or I go.
Charlie Reading:This is going to be a book I'm going to enjoy, and that goes on the holiday list brilliant recommendation, and we have a closing tradition on this podcast where we get the last guest to ask the next guest a question without knowing who that person is going to be. So the last guest was former iron man, multiple world champion, chris McCormack, otherwise known as Macca, and I think Claire has got Macca's question lined up.
Claire Fudge:So if endurance sport was a business mentor, what would its most important lesson be?
Chris Brindley:Proper preparation. When you look at endurance, I don't think you could or should enter that without a really good level of preparation. Have a plan, but be prepared for the unexpected. So I have to say that every plan tends to dismantle at first point of contact. But I do, I do think that would be. Preparation. For me will be everything, and you know, getting some really smart people around you perhaps have done it in the past, all of that. But if we talk about warm-up, peak performance, you know, for me endurance, I don't think you can take it lightly. So it was a great question. And for me, preparation.
Charlie Reading:Brilliant, brilliant. I think it was Mike Tyson that said a plan is great until you get punched in the face. It's still hugely valuable, isn't it? So, chris, it's been absolutely fascinating listening to you. I love hearing the frameworks, I love hearing the stories, I love hearing the lessons and the business, particularly the business lessons. There's so much value in here, and my reading list has just expanded. It's a good job.
Charlie Reading:I listen to books because I can do it while I'm training and it's just expanded exponentially. So, yeah, a huge thank you for what you've done for sport, for business and for sharing that on the podcast. Oh, thank you.
Chris Brindley:Charlie, and thank you, claire, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Charlie Reading:Wow, there was a lot to take in there. What did you make of that interview with Chris?
Claire Fudge:Brindley, there was, as you say, there were just so many different levels kind of going on, lots of things that we talk about, lots of things that you, you're coaching and trust a team in terms of um, talk about the business card, the school cards, but also the idea of frameworks. I mean he, even when we weren't talking about frameworks, he was talking in his frameworks, wasn't he? And I just think I mean, I use frameworks in my business and my coaching and teaching, as, as do you, but I think you know the use of a framework, the, the having the ability to be able to, for the other person to be able to understand as well, you know, whether that's the athlete. You know he's talking both on the side, in terms of him working in sports, but also him working in in big corporates as well, um, so that was really interesting to kind of see it. Both sides, what, what was, what were your thoughts on the idea of, you know, the, the business card and the frameworks?
Charlie Reading:So the frameworks I completely agree with and the more I've built up the trusted team and understood the best way that I can coach, the more I've understood the power of those frameworks, because I keep so.
Charlie Reading:I've recently had a conversation with two or three people who are thinking about selling their business and obviously the trusted team is trying to get people to have a saleable and scalable business and because I've built a framework, I now know exactly the questions to ask them to help them decide whether they should be scaling or selling and so that anything that gives you a framework and, like you said, it's just a toolkit, toolkit, it's a thinking toolkit and when you get a certain problem, you go, oh, I know that this is the tool for that problem, I'll work through those questions.
Charlie Reading:Like he said about ken blanchard's knowledge, skill, confidence and motivation, you know, if you've got somebody that's underperforming, you go through that process and you you are, go through that framework. So I think it's, I think it's really powerful and I think what he talked about with the balanced scorecard, but particularly around the wheel of life Jack Black's wheel of life I really liked Because so, as you'll know from being a part of the Trusted Team, we do the evaluation spotlight. He said he does that every three months, obviously with the Trusted Team, that's what I was thinking of.
Charlie Reading:Every two months, we're getting it started all off with these six areas of your life.
Charlie Reading:What are you getting as a score out of 10 and what's working and what's not working, and it's just a. It's just brilliant in terms of bringing an awareness to well. Okay, this bit of my life is going really well and this bit of my life is not going so well, so I need to to redress that bit. So I really like that. What else did you take from Chris's conversation? Oh, my god, there was so much to, so I really liked that. What else did you take from Chris's?
Claire Fudge:conversation. Oh God, there was so much to take. But I really liked the idea of this. I mean, it really frustrates me in the world of nutrition where people think in these black and white kind of terms of you know, this is good, this is bad, and actually he was talking about, you know, in terms of it's not right and wrong's, like right and left, and I love the idea of like actually what. You know, we are all human beings and we think in slightly different ways, and it doesn't mean to say that left is the wrong way, it just means it's a different way of thinking and just some of the very kind of practical things that he, I guess, has, you know, really learned from the bottom up. You know he talks about going in and printing checks, didn't he to start off with, and so just these kind of different ideas of really being able to teach in any environment, whether that's in, you know, kind of a sporting environment or whether it's in in a boardroom, and I really could see the benefit of this warm-up.
Claire Fudge:So meeting right, like when he was talking, I was like this is so true, isn't it rushing around? You haven't seen the agenda, or there isn't one written or it's not particularly great. You run in, you're a bit late and you know, hands up, you know me very well always a little bit late, not to say I'm not prepared, but perhaps I'm not so prepared, right, because I'm late. But this idea of actually be prepared for that meeting, turn up in every single way and the warm down, I, you know, actually take time there and then, when your brain is fresh, to be able to action, everything you need to action, and then take time out. What do you, what you know in your experience in business, what have, what have you taught as a culture in your teams in terms of this idea of you know, going into a meeting, being prepared, what you know, what have you taught in the past?
Charlie Reading:Well, I think I also really like that. I wrote that down. I really loved the analogy of sport to business for that. But it reminded me of the structure that we use for the leadership meetings which I do for each of the businesses that I run or invest in, and so what we've been doing recently was so we'd get AI to do ChatGPT, to do a deep research piece on the specific business that we're talking about, but also the specific problems that we need to solve at the moment. So I'll go off and put this bit. You know, if you haven't used deep research on ChatGPT, it'll put together a whole lot of research. It takes about 15 minutes to do from loads of different sources, but it's quite heavy is use Notebook LM to convert that into a podcast, which is a 20 minute really easy to digest conversation between two fictional people about the content of that document, and I've sent it out to all the people that are attending the leadership meeting before that meeting. So that's like their warm up. They're warming their brain up by having listening to this podcast, which is actually about their specific problem in their specific business and their specific sector.
Charlie Reading:Then in the actual meeting, the peak performance getting everyone to speak, I think is really powerful. And actually I often say in the Kaizen meetings that we do for the guys that we coach through the trusted team leaders speak last. It's your aim to get everyone else to speak on this subject before you bring your ideas to the table. So I think that was fantastic. I love the idea of then in the meeting going right, nobody's leaving this meeting until we actually have a specific.
Charlie Reading:We've kind of put the building blocks in place so that we now have you're not leaving here and going. I've got to write up three pages of notes or actions. It's already built into goals that you're now going to, you're going to drive towards for the next quarter between now and the next leadership meeting, and then definitely the recovery afterwards. Don't get that time off at the end of the leadership meeting, which actually at the annual leadership meeting, that would be a dinner for all of the people in that leadership meeting. So they're kind of they've got that mental defrag. I think that's really powerful. I thought that was a really brilliant principle and also, yeah, just I mean like I think, the number of books and frameworks and I've never really looked into anything by Jack Black, so I now got five or six things I need to look at for him. One final takeaway what would you draw out from that conversation as a final takeaway?
Claire Fudge:First of all I thought Jack Black maybe was a rum.
Charlie Reading:That's all I could think, but I obviously need to look it up properly. He's also a Hollywood actor that did School of Rock and things like that.
Claire Fudge:Exactly, I think the power of this idea of having a culture of this warm up, being prepared for a meeting or whatever it is, being prepared for a situation, time to be able to action something and then being able to step away from it, that for me, is a really great analogy that I can take away and use for myself, but also I can use with my clients, with my athletes. I think you could use that in any situation.
Charlie Reading:I think it's really good. And actually Amazon News. There's a famous Amazon example how Amazon meetings. You go in, you all sit there and read a document, so they actually do the warm up in the meeting time itself. So you're all sitting and reading the same document beforehand, so you're all coming at it with the same amount of information and then they have the discussion and then they create action points. So, yeah, I think that's a good example of what Chris is talking about. Yeah, loads to take away, loads of brilliant business lessons and for everyone that's listening at home, keep on training.