“I think in every organization, there are three types of people. There are prayers, stayers, and players.” – Andrew Grill
Keynote speaker and acclaimed Actionable futurist, Andrew Grill, provides strategic digital transformation programs to businesses across multiple industries. With experience covering a multitude of fields, from computer engineering to financial services and property, Andrew offers a unique insight into the challenges faced by businesses, in the wake of COVID–19, and more generally.
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Transcript:
That’s actually really interesting because as you say, you don’t see many engineers that transition into marketing. So that left brain sort of critical thinking, sort of quite rational thinking that you have, that you kind of is the bedrock of engineers. Now you’ve married that with more of the creative sort of right brain thinking. What impact does having that left brain, right brain have on your clients that you advise and your career?
Andrew Grill:
Well, I suppose again, back to first principles, when there’s a problem, be it a business problem or a technical problem, reverse engineer, what is it that is causing that? And so looking at a marketing problem, how do we solve that? What are the things that we can put in there? I wouldn’t say I’m any better than the other marketers out there. I just approach problems in a different way. I’ll give you another example. At Telstra, my boss at the time, Libby Christie, hi Libby if you’re listening. She said, “Andrew, I want you to generate a TV show, internal TV show that we can actually broadcast around Australia to our Salesforce internally to 1,000 people.”
Andrew Grill:
So I created a TV show once a month, where we would do that live to air. And I remember dealing with the agency at the time, Jack Morton. And they said, “Gosh, we love having you on the team. You’re a client that has so many great ideas. Can you come and work here?” It was just a breath of fresh air to have someone with really creative ideas and a budget and knowing that the art of the possible, the technology.
Nathan Anibaba:
Really fascinating. You’re a speaker on all things, digital disruption, social selling, the workplace of the future, artificial intelligence, digital diversity, personal branding and employee advocacy. Many have called you the Actionable Futurist. What is a Actionable futurist?
Andrew Grill:
Well I named myself the Actionable futurist deliberately. And if I go to an event and people see my badge and it says Actionable futurist, it invites a discussion. Because most people know what they think a futurist is. And when you put the word Actionable in front, they go, well, how’s that different from a normal sort of futurist.
Nathan Anibaba:
Sure.
Andrew Grill:
And so what I try and do, as I said before, is give near term advice. Some of my contemporaries are amazing futurists. I mean, look at Arthur C. Clark, who is one of my heroes. He predicted the internet in essentially early 1970s, that we’d be working away from the office and those sorts of things. So the problem was though Arthur saw things 30 years in the distance. Most clients I deal with don’t have 30 years to wait. They’ve not even got 30 days sometimes with what’s happening.
Nathan Anibaba:
Sure.
Andrew Grill:
So what can I tell them that’s practical and Actionable, they can go and put in place today, tomorrow, next week that will actually set them up for the future? And so deliberately I’ve used the word Actionable futurist. It’s also a great for my website and for SEO because it comes up different from a normal futurist.
Nathan Anibaba:
Well let’s talk a little bit about futurists in general, because many have criticized the term because many have said, look, it’s impossible. It’s very difficult to predict the future. How do we know what the future is going to look like when all of the machinations around the economy, how technology is changing, political changes, instability, all of that thrown into the mix? And within that, we need to sort of help our clients navigate some tricky, tricky waters. How can any one individual predict the future?
Andrew Grill:
They can’t and anyone that says they can is lying. I think, if you look at what I was saying in January, I was actually at an event where I was talking about the decade ahead to a law firm, and I was talking about the future of work. And I said in the next five to seven years, we might all be working, not at home, not at the office, but somewhere in between in what I call a third space. Fast forward to a month later, that’s what we were doing.
Nathan Anibaba:
[inaudible 00:06:38].
Andrew Grill:
And then my futurist view has to be, well, what is going to happen in the next few weeks and months rather than then next few years? And I suppose it’s changing all the time. And so while futurism sometimes looks long-term to say we’ll be in flying cars or autonomous vehicles. What I deliberately try and do is give that near term view with the information I have and the fact that we’ve all lived through the world’s largest work from home experiment means that we all understand the dynamics of working outside the office. And I think that then makes it easier to predict what might happen next, because we’ve had this global experiment, we’ve seen what happens to humans when they’re forced to work away from the office.
Nathan Anibaba:
Really, really fascinating. Well, let’s talk a little bit about sort of what the future looks like then over the next sort of 6, 12, even 18 months if you’ve got an opinion on it. Because you’ve got a background in technology, property, financial services, as we mentioned at the top of the program, and we’ve all been thrust into this work from home environment, we’ve all been forced to sort of adopt new ways of working and technology and all of our businesses have fundamentally changed, or at least they will change in the short to medium and longterm. I don’t think any business or any industry will come out of this unscathed. What advice do you give your clients? And especially considering that we’re a creative services business, we’re an agency ourselves. What advice do you give creative services businesses about what the future holds in the next sort of 6, 12, 18 months, as far as the way that our businesses should be constructed and how we should be looking at the world?
Andrew Grill:
Yeah. When we look at the future of work regardless of what we’re going through at the moment, I look at the three Ps: people, place and purpose. So in a creative business that people will never go away. You can not generate a award-winning campaign with robots, you need the computers, or you need the humans rather, to have that very creative human element. The place is something that is really, really important. And I talk about this third place. And so I think what’ll happen is that we may not all go back to the office anytime soon. In fact, most of my friends that are working in financial services that work in the city, they’re not even given a return to work date, as we record in, what is it? Almost August, 2020.
Andrew Grill:
So we’ll actually find a hybrid and it may not be that we all race off to a, we work or an office group to work. It might be that libraries start augmenting themselves as that third place. I read somewhere that Westfield out at Shepherd’s Bush, the old Debenhams or one of the stores that is now empty. They’re looking at actually repurposing that into a co-working space. And so we may find that we say to our boss, you know what? I’ve been sick of working on the kitchen table. My family’s a bit sick of me working on the kitchen table. I don’t necessarily want to come into the office today. I’d like to go to my third space and actually be around somewhere where I can work effectively because I’ve learned how to actually work outside the office.
Nathan Anibaba:
Isn’t that third space Starbucks? Didn’t we brand the third space?
Andrew Grill:
Well ironically, Howard Schultz coined the term, the third space. And he wanted Starbucks to be that third space. And I’m guilty, I’ve spent many an hour in a Starbucks doing a bunch of work because it’s …
Nathan Anibaba:
This is where I’m recording the podcast.
Andrew Grill:
But I think that means that we’re comfortable working in places that are not our office and not our home. But what do we need there? We need the essentials. We need a safe place to work. We need power. We need wifi, probably even need some caffeine, but we have then the tools. I mean, how many people, five months ago knew even what Zoom was. I remember looking at one of the taxis that has a Zoom ad on it. And I thought five months ago, that was just another video conferencing site that I could choose to use. Now it is the way I stay in touch with my family in Australia. It’s how I stay in touch with my colleagues. It’s how I record podcasts. Those sorts of things.
Andrew Grill:
We know what it’s like. And ironically at IBM, I led a team that looked at collaboration and we would go into an organization, a large bank, a large airline, look at what they were using, whether it be Slack or Yammer or Microsoft Teams. And they would say, it’s just not working. Then I would say, “Well, it’s not the technology. It’s the culture. How do you actually allow a group of people that are distributed to get work done?” And that’s a really interesting, I suppose, view on the future that now we have learnt how to be away from work. How do we collaborate effectively when we can’t have that stolen coffee chat down the corridor?
Nathan Anibaba:
Super fascinating. By the way, this week, Google announced their 200,000 plus employees won’t be returning to work until July of 2021, which I thought was super fascinating. I don’t think we’ll be going back to the way things were anytime soon. So let’s talk a little bit about your speaking engagements because I watched a couple of your talks before in preparation for this interview and very engaging. I love the way that you engage with your guests and bring your subject matter to life. You asked your audience in one of the talks, if they were digitally curious, and I thought that was a really interesting question. You asked them first, are they on LinkedIn? Have you Googled yourself? Who consumes all content that on digital versus analog, I.E newspapers and printed books? You asked them to stay standing if they bought their own domain name, if they bought Bitcoin. Why do you ask your participants in the audience those questions?
Andrew Grill:
That’s a really good question. And let me give you some background as to why … I now do that at every one of my talks, even on the online ones. I used to be the speaker that would walk out and go, “It’s so great to be here,” which I actually hate. And I remember I was in Dubai a couple of years ago and my friend and colleague David Mead, who’s another speaker was a closing speaker. I was the opening keynote. So after my talk, I said, “Okay, David, you and I are colleagues. Let me have it. What should I do to be a better speaker?” And he said, “Do nothing different, but add one thing. Add some interactivity at the very beginning.” So what I do, I actually walk out on stage and I ask a cold open question. I say, “Are you digitally curious?” Everyone scratches their head and what’s this guy on about?
Andrew Grill:
I then get them all to stand up, guess what happens? First of all, the blood rushes to the head. So they feel empowered. And the endorphins kick in. Secondly, that mobile phone they we’re looking at Facebook on, goes back on the table. I then go around the room and everyone’s standing up, they look at their peers, so it becomes a peer group. And as I asked those five questions, I start with easy ones. Everyone’s on LinkedIn. A few more people have Googled themselves, a few fewer people have bought Bitcoin. It becomes different tribes.
Andrew Grill:
And when I get to that last question, have you bought some Bitcoin? There are generally three or four people standing. And what’s interesting is that then this is rabble-rouse of discussion because, “I didn’t know Greg had bought Bitcoin. Didn’t know Sally had bought Bitcoin.” And they can then see that. So it actually is a really fantastic way to start a talk because it’s engaging. Guess what happens? They put their phones down, they go we might just listen to this guy.
Nathan Anibaba:
Fascinating.
Andrew Grill:
And I have them in the palms of my hands for the next 45 minutes and thank you David for the advice, it works so well. But also it allows me to understand what my audience is like. It also allows the audience to understand the digital maturity in that very [inaudible 00:13:49].
Nathan Anibaba:
Really, really fascinating. Well, let’s talk a little bit about digital maturity then because you’re a senior advisor helping their portfolio, clients and firms rapidly scale and grow their businesses. Talk about what sort of businesses are in their portfolio first and foremost. And what challenges are they typically faced with? How do you help them?
Andrew Grill:
It’s a growth business. It was started by a couple of guys, Edward and Mark who had come out of Deutsche Bank. And so they’re career bankers. And they said, well, now that we’re sort of moved out of the sort of the career as a banker, what else can we do? And can we connect high growth companies with capital markets? And so we’re that bridge between the entrepreneur that’s come out of Imperial College, or someone has developed an amazing widget out of Cambridge University that is basically saying, how do I get access to capital? How do I get someone to help with my business plan? How do I grow? How do I scale? How do I get this amazing idea out there? And one good example is a company called Tabletop. Matthew Hussleby and the team have developed some really smart technology around a tablet to help you do guest ordering.
Andrew Grill:
Now I’ve got to tell you the beginning of COVID-19, I think everyone thought that’s a business that’s going to be really struggling. And they used the downtime during COVID to basically perfect their idea. We did a webinar a couple of weeks ago. He is rushed off his feet because you’ve now got all these pubs and clubs and facilities that are reopening. And the government regulations say that you can’t go to the bar and you can’t do this. And so we need a safe way of ordering. The byproduct is not just guest ordering but it’s the data that you can capture to provide an even better experience. And what Matthew explained is if you have a service with a pen and paper saying, what would you like to eat? You might just say I’ll just have the standard fare. But if you’ve got a tablet in front of you, that can actually suggest other things, they’re finding that the upselling that is done through an automated device or a tablet is actually quite substantial.
Andrew Grill:
So we help businesses like that, get funding and then help them grow. This particular business, we’ve got a couple of our team on the board to help them navigate them through, to get to be that growth business. And so we want all of their portfolio companies to have the advantage of the experience that Edward and Mark from the Deutsche Bank days. We’ve got a range of very smart senior advisors that are in different industries that can help connect them and connectivity into other areas. And so it’s a really exciting business to be involved in because I’m seeing firsthand some of these entrepreneurs that would really scratch their head about how to get access to these capital markets and advisors and networks, really scale their business really, really quickly.
Nathan Anibaba:
Really, really fascinating. Well, let’s talk a little bit about that then in a bit more detail, because it seems to me that there are … A lot of entrepreneurs have responded to COVID-19 very sort of creatively. Many businesses, as you’ve just mentioned have sort of re-imagining their businesses and their business models in a positive way as a result of the pandemic. But that has been quite difficult for other businesses. I would even say a lot of businesses, to really get out of the initial inertia or the fear or the scarcity mindset of what new industries do we go into? What products do we launch? How do we change the business and our people and our culture for this new normal?
Nathan Anibaba:
There’s a lot of fear stopping people from doing that, even though we know that through history, the results of such great action have resulted in the winners coming positively out of the other side. What stops a lot of people from being innovative at this time and sort of taking those risks and being different? And what advice do you give to those technology businesses that do want to create meaningful change in the world?
Andrew Grill:
I think in every organization, there are three types of people. There are prayers, stayers, and players. The prayers are just praying that this thing that’s stopping them grow, it will go away. The stayers are based just on the course, just doing the project. And the players are actively leaning forward. And this is something I talked about even before COVID-19 and it’s even more important now. I think every business before COVID-19 was thinking about how they enhance their digital strategy, whether they had one or not. And good example, Primark. Primark, when they closed their doors, when the government asked them to went from millions and hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue a week to zero, because you can’t buy through their website. There’s probably a whole lot of reasons why they can’t do that. But that means that they were probably thinking about a digital e-commerce strategy and had never enacted it.
Andrew Grill:
So I think a lot of companies now are saying, you know what? It might be now, even in my own industry and in public speaking, it’ll be a hybrid. There’ll be people that will consume the content digitally. And there’ll be some people that still want to consume the content in person. So how can we up our digital game? Even my parents in Australia, who’d never ordered groceries online probably will never go to the shop to do a big shop again, because it’s just so much easier. So what I think has happened is that those companies that have already pivoted into a digital environment are going to do very well and they can leverage and enhance what they’ve got. Those that have spent the last four or five months seeing that they were deficient in a digital strategy, hopefully have been using the time to up their game and look at how they can deliver their product and service their clients digitally.
Andrew Grill:
So I think what we will learn is that we have accelerated this. There was a quote from the new CEO of the National Australia Bank, who said that the uptake of online banking, they basically had 10 years of growth in 5 weeks because you had to do it online. And so I think while COVID has been devastating for so many communities and people have lost their lives, we need to learn from this. We need to learn from this very, very sharp inflection point about not going back to the old way of doing it. And we have had a fast forward, we’ve pushed the fast forward button on digital innovation and digital maturity for every consumer almost overnight. So let’s take advantage of that.
Nathan Anibaba:
Well, looking at the Primark example that you mentioned and a number of other notable ones in recent weeks and months, it’s easy to think that all we need to do now is create products and services digitally, and then offer that to the consumer. And then hey Presto, we have a new business, a new operating model, a new way of existing in the world. But creating lasting change or digital transformation and doing it properly is not just about the tech, getting in the right technology systems and products and services. There’s a leadership component to this. There’s a culture component to this. Talk about what the culture and leadership needs to be like in an organization that fosters true digital transformation.
Andrew Grill:
Yeah, what’s important is what I call digital diversity. I’m a huge proponent of diversity of all types in all organizations, because you want to get the best people and the best ideas and have diversity of thought as well as diversity of ideas. But digital, being digitally curious and being digitally diverse means that your top table, your management team, your board understand digital. And I’ve been a huge proponent to all of my audiences that they should have people that understand this new world because this digital world, you know it like I do, it’s a language. When you talk about Bitcoin and Cloud services and IOT and all this, they’re buzzwords. And if you’re going to [inaudible 00:21:16] for $5 million spin on a brand new Cloud platform, the board says, well, that’s a lot of money. I suppose we should approve it. But then someone who has some digital diversity is going to say, well, where’s it hosted? What metal is it on? Who’s the provider? What are the security implications of that?
Andrew Grill:
Asking the sort of questions that mean that they understand what it means for the business. And it isn’t just always about reverse mentoring and getting a millennial to educate one of the more experienced people on the team. It’s actually people being digitally curious. So if I’m on a board or I’m a senior manager, and I don’t know about cybersecurity and the impacts on my business, go off on a part-time course, go and understand what it means for my business and so I can be better informed and have that digital diversity. Because what I find is that the senior management say yeah, we’re going to do it. The young leaders say, of course, we’re going to do it. It’s the middle management that don’t understand why they’re being asked to change, but often are the way. That’s not a negative it’s because that’s the way their incented.
Nathan Anibaba:
Let’s talk a little bit about VC money and fast growth in startups versus organic growth as we talked about a moment earlier. I interviewed a guest a couple of weeks ago who was really against the idea of taking VC money, especially for early stage tech founders. There’s this glamorization of taking money from a VC, growing fast and becoming the next unicorn, the next Facebook or Instagram, or go down the list of the biggest tech companies in the world. And his pushback to that was take an Oak tree. An Oak tree grows very slowly, but it’s probably the strongest tree of any of the trees in the forest. It’s not growth at breakneck speed. Trees that grow quickly are generally the ones that don’t have the most durability. Discuss.
Andrew Grill:
This is a pet topic for me. So I think companies with a great idea can take VC money to accelerate quickly. And the Oak tree example is good. So if you’ve got a really solid Oak tree and the one next to you has a better idea and gets to market faster, then more fruit will be harvested and that other Oak tree or apple tree, whatever will be barren. So I think there is a case for taking VC money, but from a VC that gets what you do and will actually be somewhat involved in the business rather than running a check. And then the next thing is, don’t take too much money. I think some companies say you’re going to offer me 10 million in cash, well great, and they don’t need it all straight away. And so they get a bit lazy and I’ve seen this in companies I’ve been involved in as well.
Andrew Grill:
But the other thing is people get hung up on valuation and yes, for a VC, you want a high valuation. You want to be a unicorn? Does that mean you have a billion dollars in revenue or you’re valued at a billion dollars? And there’s a difference between valuation and revenue. Revenue pays the bills. If you have money in the door, you can pay your payroll. I was once offered a job at a large company and they said, “We’re going to pay you 30% less than what you’re on at the moment, but we’re going to give you shares.” And I said, “But when I go to Waitrose, they don’t take shares, they take cash.”
Andrew Grill:
So I think the issue is, can you delineate valuation versus revenue? I would much rather invest in a company that had strong revenue, which means there a customer need, which means they’ve worked out the customer kinks and those sort of things, and have a line of credit. So let’s say, we’re going to give you 10 million, but let’s agree when you need it. And we want to see some revenue growth and we want to encourage you to grow revenue and be able to make payroll and everything else before we give you some more growth funding. So I think there’s a role for it. It’s not about writing a check. And I think if you look at what happens on the West Coast versus what happens here in Europe, it’s harder to raise money in Europe. I think maybe that’s a good thing because they look more deeply at the business plan and the people behind it. How quickly they can grow the business.
Andrew Grill:
I remember back in the beginning of the millennium, 2000, 2001, there were these magazines you could buy. There was Red Herring, there was Business 2.0 that were 400 pages thick. And they were full of glossy ads for companies that were essentially selling air and increasing in valuation. And guess what? None of them exist anymore. So I’ve been through, I ran 6 startups over a 12 year period. So I’ve got the scars of funding a VC and everything else. But sold for revenue, not for valuation, I think is a smart mode. Yeah, have a high valuation. If you’ve got lots of revenue and people love your product, you’ll have a huge revenue. Look at Netflix, look at Zoom. They now have a high valuation because [crosstalk 00:25:43] people need.
Nathan Anibaba:
Sure, really, really fascinating. I could talk about this all day with you, but we’re sadly running out of time. Final question before we get into our speed round questions that we ask all of our guests that come onto the show. Let’s talk a little bit about commercial real estate in this COVID environment. You’ve been the chief executive of Property Look, Australia’s largest commercial property portal. Commercial real estate is going through challenges at the moment let’s say. What does the future of commercial real estate look like considering that we’re all so comfortable working from home?
Andrew Grill:
Well, with my futurist hat on, late last year, before we even knew what COVID was, I was asked by a company that was building a building in Canada in seven years time. They said, “What should we think about?” So rather than thinking about the cabling or the server rooms, I said, “Well, think about being flexible because in seven years time, we’ll probably have a floor plate, not with a whole bank on the floor plate. We’ll have a full plate that one week has other companies in there, we can move things around.” So I think what we’re going to find is there will be, yes, a lot of office space at the moment is going unused because people aren’t going back into the office. But back to that third space, is it that we can actually have other tenants in the same space that need access to utilities and those sort of things that may not be the whole floor plate.
Andrew Grill:
So I think we’re going to have, and I’m closely connected to some of the commercial real estate companies here. They’re obviously putting a positive spin on it because they know that landlords are going to be very, very nervous, especially if you’ve got long leases about what do we do? And if I was in the supermarket game, I would realize that some of my big box supermarkets are going to shrink in size and I might have to augment the space there. But the good news is people still need that third space to work.
Andrew Grill:
And so I think while at the moment, we’re going to be challenged because we’ve got all of these offices that are lying dormant, or if people come back in, we can use every third or fourth seat so the cost per seat per square foot is going to be huge. I think it’ll balance out. We may not see a lot of new buildings built because we don’t need the space per se, but I think it will be about augmenting and about leveraging this third space where the space is flexible and you can control access and security and those sorts of things. And it might be that floor plate that was full of bankers now has four or five different companies in there, and every three or four weeks, it changes. But I think we’re going to see a lot more of that and augmenting the existing space.
Nathan Anibaba:
Really, really fascinating. Andrew, I’ve only got you for a few more minutes, so let’s get into our speed round now. These are the questions that we ask everyone that comes on the show. So I’m fascinated to ask you some of them as well. Sometimes we hit a low point. What do you do in those difficult times to motivate yourself?
Andrew Grill:
I read, I walk, I go and talk to some friends, get inspired. I have a great circle of friends across different industries that inspire me and go and talk to them. And they inspire me to get back on track and get out of the rut.
Nathan Anibaba:
You talk about reading. Tell us about some of your favorite books, fiction, nonfiction, business related, whatever.
Andrew Grill:
Nonfiction, I like reading about people that have changed the world. Probably my favorite book over the last few years has been a book written by a Sydney Morning Herald journalist about the Sydney Opera House and how Jorn Utzon basically battled a whole lot of reasons to get the opera house built again, going back to first principles and he sold a whole lot of engineering challenges. Really, really inspirational. It’s called The House. It’s well worth a read.
Nathan Anibaba:
The House, I’m adding that to my very long Amazon reading list at the moment. If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing?
Andrew Grill:
I’d be flying helicopters. That’s my bucket list. To learn how to fly a helicopter. Great friend of mine, Jenny [Booz 00:00:29:16], who was a colleague from Australia. She has become a helicopter pilot, and I am very jealous of her Instagram feed.
Nathan Anibaba:
I’m sure she has an amazing Instagram feed. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Andrew Grill:
This, probably not right now, but I really like New York. And I nearly lived in New York when I was at IBM. I lived in Adelaide then I moved to Sydney. I got bored of Sydney and then moved to London, I’m not bored of London just yet.
Nathan Anibaba:
Bored of Sydney?
Andrew Grill:
Well, yeah, it’s lovely place, but I’d done everything I needed to do in 12 years. Maybe New York will be the next place, but I would miss my friends. I have some amazing friends here in London. I would miss them too much if I left.
Nathan Anibaba:
New York’s a great city. Absolutely love it. My final question Andrew, what’s the single biggest thing that you’ve yet to achieve that you’d like to achieve in your career?
Andrew Grill:
Wow, what a huge question. Apart from being a helicopter pilot, I want to mentor more. I love mentoring people from all walks of life to get them to their fullest potential. So I don’t think I’ve done enough mentoring.
Nathan Anibaba:
Really fascinating. Andrew, thank you so much for being on Client Side.
Andrew Grill:
Nathan. I really enjoyed our discussion. Thanks for having me.
Nathan Anibaba:
If you’d like to share any comments on this episode or any episode of Client Side, then find us online at Fox Star Agency. If you’d like to appear as a guest on the show, please email Milly at Fox Star Agency. The people that make the show possible are Milly Bell and Natasha Rosic, our booker/researcher. David Claire, as our head of content. Ben Fox is our executive producer. I’m Nathan Anibaba. You’ve been listening to Client Side from Fox Agency and we’re done.
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