Transcript
Pei Mun Lim 0:05
Hello, and welcome to another episode of OnThePeiroll, my podcast where I talk to my guests about fascinating topics such as leadership, project management, Salesforce, consulting, delivering great projects with great people. And in today’s episode, I get to speak with one of my favorite, or my most favorite project managers. His name is John Giannini. And we work together at Capgemini, where he has been for quite a while. So we had a long conversation about project management about things that can go wrong in a project and how to approach those situations, and how to manage great teams. I hope that you will enjoy this because I really did. Thanks a lot. Good morning, John. Welcome to my podcast. It’s called OnThePeiroll . How are you today?
John Giannini 1:11
Very well, thanks. Thank you very much.
Pei Mun Lim 1:14
We have worked together, not quite work together, we have worked in the same company. And we moved around the same circles at camp. And so I know you as this font of all knowledge, whenever I hit a road bump zones, the one that I go to, but before we kind of get there, I know your journey to your role at at CAP was a very long and very interesting one. So I would love to hear you tell your story. Start wherever you want. I know where you’re going to start. But yeah, now I’d love to hear your story.
John Giannini 1:51
Okay. Okay, so I’ll um, I’ll give you a pocket summary of a fairly convoluted route that led me into Bi T. It’s started back in 1980. So I am, I actually started work as an apprentice gas fitter for British Gas at a time when it was nationalized. And I did my apprenticeship, which was three years. So I couldn’t fit central heating boilers, and get gas cookers and fires and all that sort of stuff. Qualified and then did that for two years. So my first five years of working life for as a service engineer for bridge fests I actually had here in the United States as well. And then those five years, I’ve got opportunity to go and work for they call it industrial commercial sales, which was moving at the domestic market, which I worked in into a pure silo was rolled in commercial premises. So it could be anything from a factory burning millions and millions of cubic meters of gas to a little office shop, that might want a gas supply or a meter or a boiler, or a heater or, and I did that for five years, but it wasn’t really very satisfying. And we went through privatization and it became a very much of a hard sell job. And as I said to you, prior to a start in the call properly, it made me realize I didn’t really want to be a salesman. And they were advertising internally for business analysts. It was in British Gas, his own IT department, over in Croydon in southeast London. And so I applied for it. And I guess, because of my business experience, and 10 years in, in the company, by then, I actually got a job as a trainee business analyst. And that was at the time of green screens and kicks COBOL DB tau, for those of you that are old enough to remember those things. But my role was as an analyst, and it was my business experience, rather than technical skills that that they wanted. And so that’s how I got into it starts in the first place, working working in Croydon. And the last thing that I got involved with British Gas was they decided to outsource the whole of British gases to IT department. And we had to do an evaluation of various potential outsourcing partners. And one of those outside sourcing partners was Hoskins. There was IBM, I think it was an A cup CSC was another one. And I was part of the evaluation team. So we wrote the RFP we wrote the RFP assessment questions. We then met the various companies. And we did all the evaluations and made a decision basically, at the end of that process. It was clear that Hoskins at that time, was a country mile ahead of the others. The other company suddenly wanted really to take on the work get rid of the existing staff, whereas Hoskins actually had a real Passion for keeping the people on. So I was part of that big team, I got introduced to, to Haskins, and rather than wait to be pushed basically into a role in it that to her area really enriched guess I didn’t know anything about, I actually jumped in and joined Hoskins there and then as business as a business now, analyst. And that was it. So I started off as business analyst. I did a couple of projects early on, it was probably what’s it 9090 to 91. And after after doing certain amount of work, as Hoskins is an analyst that I was working on an automotive project, and they offered me the opportunity to do PMO. And then after that, they said, You fancy taking on the role as a project manager. And at that point in time, I thought, well, I don’t know whether I want to be a project manager, I still haven’t got the technical skills, if you like to do coding and all those sorts of things. But it seems reasonable to give it a go. So if you okay, and at that time, that was a Microsoft Project. So it’s nothing to do with with Salesforce, which is where I ended up. And so So I started my project management career. So it was a completely different technologies. And I started from from not knowing anything other than doing a few training courses. And that was started my project management career really at that point. During that period, Hoskins was taken over by Capgemini. And it’s been Capgemini ever since. So, and I ended up doing 26 years at Capgemini. So it was a long period. If we talk specifically about my,
my transition from various technologies, because I was technology agnostic to Salesforce, so I actually was doing a purchasing upgrade project for ministry of defense with a colleague of mine. At the time, who he said to me, he was actually the salesman on the project. And he said to me, I found this new technology called Salesforce. He said, I’m talking to the management at a cap and set for business unit or take minute, would you come on and be my ops manager and project manager for it? Fair enough, I’ll give it a go. And that was Salesforce. And so I run our first Salesforce project, which was a small, small project. And just I think it was two or three of us in the team. And that went on to them bigger ones from there, there, and then thereafter, so that was the start of it. So that was a long time ago. I mean, that was 2007 2008. So there was no service, there was no clouds, there was just Salesforce. And and we actually worked really closely with Salesforce, that time we were replacing air resources into the Salesforce team, to work with them to learn how to implement Salesforce it was so it was that early on. And then on and off. I’ve been working with Salesforce, projects within cap pretty much on and off all the time. And then about 810 years ago, I become full time in in the Salesforce practices as a senior project manager. And I’ve been doing Salesforce projects ever since really so until until I decided I had the opportunity to stop. So various different stuff we only implemented in UK, Europe and around the world done some really interesting stuff met some really interesting people. And that’s that’s how I ended up getting into it. So a bit of a bit of absorb I’m really,
Pei Mun Lim 8:40
really I mean, it the way you tell it, it sounds really natural that it was just a series of acquisitions that you got to where you are so did you say 26 years?
John Giannini 8:54
26 years a cap? Yeah. been five years, British guests in their IT department. 10 years prior to that. But yeah, so 26 year old cat.
Pei Mun Lim 9:03
I’ve not heard the story. So you were there right at the beginning then setting up the business unit?
John Giannini 9:10
Yeah. So Salesforce started, I say around about 2008. And I was one of the original founding members may calamari at the idea who’s long gone now. And I was one of the founding members if you like, yeah, long time ago,
Pei Mun Lim 9:27
hadn’t realized that you’ve been you know, solely in sales base. Okay, so what kind of so that’s interesting, because this was a while ago, but you actually set up the business unit. What did you did you think, oh, that’s an interesting thing to do. I someone so we chatted about, you know, earlier on about this role that came across my my lab which was around you know, delivery. For a small partner, and I would imagine it’d be about the same thing. So the thinking of let’s set up a business unit within cap, which is quite a large company, what did that involve? Was it a very informal? Hey, I’ve got an idea. I think we should do this because cell phones is going to be the next big thing? Or did you have to kind of put together a plan or growth in? So what was that like?
John Giannini 10:28
So So to be fair, so cat, Callum came up with the idea. And he sold x because captured my management. And he was responsible for printing, presenting and developing the business plans and the approach. It was him who established the first relationship with Salesforce as well. So my role was supporting that. So I helped him in the background with the development of the business plans, putting together the generic plans about how we might implement service offerings. And but but more focused on how we got the team set up getting the team trained, getting them onto projects. So it was more my role was more of an operations role. So it wasn’t so much around driving the business. It wasn’t a business unit at that stage. It was just a team, but I was more focused on. Okay, how do we deliver the projects, working with Callum on proposals? And then what do we do with the teams? How do we know who we’ve got? Where are they? What skills are they getting got all those sorts of things. So that tended to be more admire, and also a little bit of the project management itself once we once a work goals. So so that’s where I was more involved with the operational side of things, looking after the guys on the ground, developing the relationships with the customers.
Pei Mun Lim 11:48
So if one were to look at, you know, your career cap, so my next question is what kept you there? What made it interesting enough for you to think I am happy here. And you know, there’s no need,
John Giannini 12:05
I think, and I’ve got no external reference points, it points outside care. But there’s the by and large, everyone I met, were nice people, decent people. That there was a friendliness and approachability that there wasn’t really any hierarchy, or it’s not that impression of hierarchy. So if I wanted to go and talk to senior people, if I had a questions, I could approach them. And I think that kept me in into in cap was, was the fact that there were a lot of nice people in there. It made that part of it easy, you know. And also the work. I mean, if she if I look back at what I’ve been able to do, and I’ve worked abroad in many countries, I was working, I was traveling out to Germany one day a week, at one point for one project. There was a time when the company was playing for paying for fly business class. That was fantastic. I’d be in Heathrow by 530, on the first flight and come back at 830 in the evening, but it was just a fantastic experience. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of interesting things along the way. And lots of interesting customers as well. I mean, the variety of work that I’ve been involved with. It’s just been a great experience in that regard. It’s not not been easy by any stretch of the imagination. But I think, you know, as a general rule, it was a great set of experiences, I wouldn’t have had that if I just stayed where it was prior to joining tap. To agree, you could argue it might have been chance that I made the decision to jump but I wouldn’t have gained Whitehead, the world would have been a lot smaller. If I’d stayed where I was
Pei Mun Lim 13:54
talking about interesting projects, one thing. Yeah, what’s most interesting projects that you’ve come across the most interesting. You’re talking specifically about Salesforce projects, obviously,
Pei Mun Lim 14:07
but no, no, in general, you can talk about projects in general.
John Giannini 14:11
So in terms of just general experience, in all the time I’ve been at CAP, the one I enjoyed, one of the ones I enjoyed the most was working for them Odie because he’s working closely with all of the departments of the M od both, you know, Navy Air Force, so many in the military. But it was that was a fantastic experience purely from a personal interest perspective. If I look at actual really interesting projects I’ve done some of the work I did for Centrica, we did the Salesforce and Centrica. When I look back at it now at the time, it was probably only started with around the second or the third Salesforce project we beat project we’ve done and when I look back at it now and some of the software like FSL that’s in Salesforce now We will build him CLICK software, which is the basis of FSL and the Gantt charts, by ourselves with with the help of Salesforce on the ground way before any of that was developed. So to develop that, over three phases, we went, we did a huge call center up in Stratford upon Avon. And then we did a second phase, integrating it with a laptop, so the salesman could take it into customers and build a central heating systems and they’re close on site, print it all out and getting them to sign it up. And then we also at the end of that, when they push the button to sign it out, we did all the background software that then allowed them to actually plan all the different skills, the electricians and the plumbers, all in the right sequence to go in and do the implementation. So when I look back at that, that was so advanced in terms of what we were doing, relative to where the market was in Salesforce. And that that was, that was a great piece one plus, obviously, it was almost to a point like going home because I’d worked Centrica for years. And then so I was always going back into a world or being a different part of England, but into a world I knew. So that was good. And that was a special team from a cap perspective as well and rattling on a bit now. But the other thing that was really interesting about it was, normally you would do your own system testing. But certainly in the second and third phases, I think it was the second phase, we actually agreed with the customer that we would get end users to do the system testing. And it was a real challenge, because obviously, they had to be educated on what level of bugs was acceptable. And to move away from that. It’s a bug. It’s a problem, too. It’s a bug. But that’s your job to test it and find those bugs. And so don’t worry about it. That’s essentially what you’re there to do. Yeah. So it was again, it was, it was a great experience. So so that was that was a special project. I’ve done a couple of others a bit later on another one that was particularly good as we implemented, I think it was, if not the first one of the first major FSL implementations anywhere in the world. And we actually, although we developed it in the UK, for a UK company, the first implementation was in Melbourne, in Australia. Now, let some painful lessons there because trying to I had to be in the UK at the time and trying to actually manage a 24 hour implementation from the UK is extremely difficult, extremely difficult. So it was a real nightmare. It’s partly my ignorance, to be fair, but it was a good project for
John Giannini 17:41
I think the was it again, this was this was a third phase of work. So the original phase has just been an implementation of basic CRM into UK, Ireland. And I think it was Sweden and Norway or something like that. And then we had a separate team that was doing CPQ. And then, and then then when the fit that I’d been doing as a CRM and finished, we then moved into doing the FSL. The FSL piece was partly based in the US, partly in the, in the UK, in Scotland, and then and so we went live in the first country, in Australia. So that was great. I mean, we’ve got tripper to, to seize the guys in in the US, that was quite great experience working with these remote teams is good fun. Good fun. Very interesting.
Pei Mun Lim 18:31
I’m trying to imagine how long you went with disrupted sleep patterns, because obviously you couldn’t.
John Giannini 18:39
I did. I did two weeks in particular, when we were going live. And in my ignorance at the time, I thought we could run to project managers 5050. And I did at least two days as 36 hours. And it’s funny going back and looking at your emails that you sent at the end of your session, and I go back the next day look at one that didn’t make any sense totally incomprehensible other than time, I might as well have been heavily drinking because it’s just complete rubbish. So that’s a fantastic lesson because because we had development team in the US with the UK, team sport in the UK, plus the India team plus the guys on the ground in Australia. And you really need at least three, three groups to cover up the whole time. So yeah, so it was a fantastic lesson to learn for experienced if ever I was faced with it again.
Pei Mun Lim 19:33
What other projects come to mind where it was, you know, filled with lots of learning that you can share.
John Giannini 19:38
I think most of them were really a lot of them for different reasons. But I think the major ones that are the major ones that I did that I learned most from they tended to be one or more fight. So like Centrica was the best part of I think three years. The other. The other one I was just talking about With the SSL implementation, that was certainly two years, and I think that they present different challenges of both in terms of dealing with your own teams and dealing with the customer teams, particularly remotely. But I also found another one I did was for a major postal customer. That was, was was great project, it was difficult, it was really difficult, because you’ve got the challenges of a huge was still suffering, I think, from a nationalization or sort of sort of mentality. But it gives me the gave me the opportunity of actually going out and meeting our team in India. And that completely transformed my rather ignorant and naive sort of view of the teams that we had no doubt in where we live in today, where it’s like, now it’s sort of zoom. And remote working, because we have to, I’m a bit old school in that I believe that face to face working is still you cannot, you can’t replicate that remotely. You know, yourself sitting there in front of their laptop, you’ve probably got stuff going on. In the background there. I’ve got a secondary screen here where I am looking at it, but I have got one. And so building up those relationships, particularly when they’re delivering stuff for you. Excuse me just a second sorry. That that Development Trust, I’m gonna die off his skull. Sorry, I didn’t cut that out. But that developing that development trust and actually understanding, I’d be on conference calls with them, right, this junk in the UK says he was slightly different to other parts of the world, then I’m meeting them face to face. Fake, you can see that realization, these guys is nice guy he’s worth working with. And you know, I think those sorts of things are incredibly important, really. And I wouldn’t have got that as if I hadn’t had that particular project. And that opportunity to go and meet at St. Louis couldn’t completely change my, my attitude. And the way I think about these teams were working with, they don’t deserve a lot of time and care them out, seems that they don’t always get, and they work incredible hours, and they work very hard. And it can be forgotten about some times.
Pei Mun Lim 22:46
I think I think I agree with you there that everyone, especially in the UK, or anywhere else should go out and visit the offshore team, because that really makes such a difference. And so you’re talking about humor, and I used to remember that the I mean, coming to England, I came in, you know, 99, it took me a while to understand that not everything that said is serious, the British got very dry sense of humor, roll role. Sometimes there’s a tinge of sarcasm in there. And it took me a while to understand that in I think when we’re on record specific, you know, before Before COVID, for example, when we had calls with remote teams, the video isn’t generally on, which is what I found out and you can’t tell if they understood. So I was running this project where there’ll be the customer and from the UK, we’d have a conversation about whatever topic and then when we debrief on the call, they’d say that they understood but so I got invited over for wedding. And I would I walked out of there and I would have the same meeting but sitting on that side. And I realized that there was lots of cues that were missed. And it was only when I was able to sit with them and talk to them and see them and see their reactions, that I realize that you know there were missed cues that lit that could have led to miss communication. And there was also really lovely people and there’s also this this deep desire to not mess up. Yep. That creates behavior, that if we don’t create a safe space for them, it exacerbates situation because they don’t want to tell you that they’re in trouble
John Giannini 24:44
here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I think it’s not just queues with your own team. I mentioned I was up in Scotland working on a project and as a project manager I coming in cold, I thought it was essential. But when you’re doing at that particular time on that particular project, I felt that it was absolutely essential that, at least to start with, we were doing the weekly progress reports and reviews face to face. Because that, to me conveys, she can look into my eyes or, and see I’m telling the truth or not as the case may be. And, you know, I’m committed enough to be there on a Friday to go through this stuff. And I think it stood us in good stead. Rather than saying, Well, you know, I’m going to go now because I need to, it’s a flight home or whatever. So I do think that that sometimes can be lost. I mean, a great example will be working with a customer team. We were actually it was actually ETS was other third party for another customer. And we’d been arguing about an interface specification. For four weeks, it wasn’t Salesforce project at this point, preset, Salesforce. And we argued backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, flexible. And in the end. They kept they were coming over anyway. And we sat down and within 20 minutes, we agreed. Now I know that is presume and all those things are the problems wouldn’t be a success about it. But it was just, it was a simple case where face to face completely changed the conversation, and we solved it. It does make a difference. There are some fantastic talks now. I mean, some of the more recent projects we’ve worked on, make working online, so much better and more professional, marvelous things, but I still like to see some face to face occasionally does make I think it makes a difference.
Pei Mun Lim 26:45
I totally agree. And I think there’s something magic about being in proximity with somebody else, sitting next to them, listening to them, you know, tell off the child about whatever they’ve done and just absorbing the energy, I think
John Giannini 27:00
it’s not just the customer, it’s the team as well, we need to spend as a project manager, I don’t think at our jobs, not just having a plan ticking the boxes, when things in updating your risk register, there’s so much interpersonal stuff that is easy to forget or miss sometimes can make all the difference.
Pei Mun Lim 27:23
I am totally on board with that. Okay, this slightly, you know, feel free to what’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever done, that cost a lot that, you know, twice the laws to interpret that however you like whether personally or you know, to the project or to the client or you know, from a PR point of view, something big that you think, Ah, this is a big mistake. If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t erase it because of the lessons I got. But it was pretty painful to move through.
John Giannini 28:02
I’ll give you a tongue in cheek example, as a starting point. And funnily enough, this all comes back to central This is they stick in my mind, I guess. I’ve been working with these customers Project Manager for weeks, and we had a wonderful project plan on MSP I might have even been P and W then I don’t know. And I’d gone through it religiously with him every week, we would go through it together and check the tasks. And because we were quite well organized there. And we were months in, and then just just out of the blue. I was going through it one day, and there’s a dependency link. And we sit here. And I’ve pulled this dependency link between the two things. And it was an auto schedule when the whole project went out a month. Now we had a team of must be 15 people, you can imagine the impact not only on the time, on the cost. And so that was that was a bit of an awkward one, if I’m honest. So that but that. So lesson learned, isn’t it really, I suppose. If I think about other projects, I can’t think of specific things that that lead power, I know we have problems. The Commons because of the distances I mentioned about the Australia, a trip that was in that one, it would probably take
John Giannini 29:37
a bit of time to think about that, to be honest with you. But most projects have have difficult points in them in terms of progress. And I’ve actually said to customers before you know, there will be points where we will clash or you know, Clash heads because there’ll be something that will doesn’t go quite according to what we plan and we will have to try and resolve it. So that’s While while we’re here we’re working through. And I think I think it’s a natural thing for all projects, because it’s, it’s a well known old adage, isn’t it, you know, facts are new, is good as the day you write it, and then it’s out the window. And that’s true. So it doesn’t matter how carefully you try to work something out, there’s always a challenge or something that comes up, it’s not expected or you miss something I can think of, I now can think of one example where I should have felt she stepped back. This was a painful lesson. And this was simply that we went into a project with a quite a clear definition of scope. But with a customer who was new to agile, due to development, processes, full stop, and new to the technology as well. And it was clear when we first got in there, that they were gonna need a certain amount of education and help. And also, they didn’t actually know what they wanted. And, and as a project manager, at that point, I should have actually said, like, Stop, let’s reassess what you need to do completely. And then rework out what’s gonna take delivery. And, and what we tried to do was the right thing for the customer and keep it going, and help them and educate them and change it as well. And it probably caused a lot more. I’m sure it caused a lot more pain, a lot more confusion in the long run, than if we had just come out and said, and I consider that a lesson for me insofar as I should have been much more upfront about that, rather than doing what I thought was the right thing. I think in the back of my mind, I knew that perhaps the probably wasn’t going to be the best, the best thing. So but yeah, so lesson learned another lesson, another lesson.
Pei Mun Lim 31:51
So so that kind of leads me to my next question, which, which? So you’re talking about this little voice in your hand? Have you found it to be right, most of the time, or all the time has steered you wrong?
John Giannini 32:08
Know what I think it does. I mean, I’ve always tried to be true to myself, and what I think are my strengths, my assets. And I’m not necessarily the most in the detail of the weeds planning, ticking, the boxes, sort of project manager, I’m extremely, I’ve always felt that, personally, personal relationships, and those sorts of things. The interpersonal things are the things that make a project work and successful, because you’re always going to have problems. And if you’ve got the right sort of relationship, it means that resolving those problems can be less painful. But then that demands a certain amount of honesty, in terms of when you’re delivering messages to the customers, which isn’t always easy to do sometimes, you know, it’s not, it’s not easy to break bad news. And I’m not saying that I’ve always been good at doing that. But I do think it makes a difference. And so that’s, that’s always been my focus. I’ve tried to be honest, as much as I can and straightforward and, and be open about what we’re doing. And it’s all doom and gloom. It’s fun as well, you know, so take the mickey in joke and laugh as a matter of anyone who knows me will know. But that’s, I think, I think my in that regard, I think voice in my head has been quite good. Yeah, I think I’ve tried to be true to what I feel is the right by doing things as much as I can. That always been the easiest thing. But
Pei Mun Lim 33:49
so if someone were to come up and say, you know, kind of brand new, and asks you, what, what do you think a project manager is there to do? Apart from the apart from the, you know, deliver the time budget? And you know, think, what do you think a good project manager is there to do? And what are the key differentiators that highlight a great project manager from just a mediocre one?
John Giannini 34:22
So I think that I suppose you’ve got to be reasonably organized, and quite clear, clear thinking. I don’t I don’t believe you have to be prepared to make a decision if you want, if you have to. And what do I mean by that? So I think I mean, as I’ve said at the beginning of the interview, I’m technology agnostic, I have to rely on the subject matter experts in terms of technical delivery and what we do in that regard. And I think there’s been an advantage. I know you get a lot of technical stroke project managers who can do certain amount of technical work as well. But I think that actually can influence how you actually do things when you’re not necessarily doing the right way. So I’ve had to learn to rely on people. And also, you know, sniff that bit of when they’re trying to blow smoke. But so getting back to your question, then. So I think I think that having a reasonably clear view of what you need to do is good. So the ability to plan and to organize is a great thing. I think it’s really important that you can talk to people talk to people in a relaxed way that encourages confidence that you are as honest as you’re able to be, so that they understand that, and it but you have to have an empathy. So you have to be realistic about what you’re trying to do. I don’t, I’ve never felt that demanding from your team, is the right way to get the best out of team. I’ve always prided myself that the guys that worked for me, guys and gals, aren’t me when I say that, irrespective of country or anything else, they work for me because they wanted to work for me, because they wanted to do a good job for me. And to that extent, I think you have to look out for them to a certain degree to protect. Now, that’s not to say that you should mother them or mollycoddle them or whatever, you know, there are still times when you have to have hard conversations. I’ve taken people have projects if I’ve had to. But I do think that, that you missed an opportunity sometimes, if you don’t have the team working with you rather than in spite, if you so so this same approach pretty much comes for both the team internally and the customer. So a degree of honesty, and taking taking them with you so that when you do hit a challenge, they know that you’re trying to do the best you can with that be that you’re a social from a team perspective, or that you’re a week behind from a customer perspective. It doesn’t matter. So I always I feel that, that in a lot of instances and examples I see. I think that that particular set of skills isn’t necessarily recognized as much as it should be. Now, I know a lot of project managers are like that. But not a lot. Not pretty much is that necessarily on. And I understand that there’s a there’s a balance, because it’s a commercial operation when we’re working from consultancies and the likes. So you’ve got our commercial responsibility and all the rest of it. But sometimes I think that people want to tick boxes tick, box tickers when actually, that’s not necessarily what’s what’s the best. That’s only my opinion,
Pei Mun Lim 37:46
is a very valuable opinion. So if you want to look around, okay, so the project managers that you that that’s running Celsus project or any other software delivery project, from a consulting point of view, what are the common mistakes you seen project managers make that you think? You know, you’ve all the PMs just knew this one tip. There’s one tip.
John Giannini 38:16
I wish I knew that. Microphone. I wish I know. I honestly don’t know if it’s as easy as that. I think communication is at the heart of it all. Really? I don’t think it’s technical understanding. I think I think it is, I think comms is the is the biggest thing. And when I say cons, I mean, not just send an email and wait for a response. I mean, pick up the phone, get on a zoom call, go and see them and say, Okay, what’s the problem? We’ll learn about this. And I think that’s, that’s our biggest advantage if we if we can get to use it. biggest strength if you like? Yes, I guess that would be the at the heartbeat. If I’m honest.
Pei Mun Lim 39:03
How about leadership styles, for example?
John Giannini 39:07
Yeah, so again, I think, I think my leadership style is quite collaborative. I think it’s, it’s seen me reasonably successful. It’s enabled me to be very approachable. And you know, you know, for me, through cap is that part my job partly because I was there so long, so I knew I’m the only one who knew the the background. So it but you know, I’ll try and help anyone with any experience. So So in terms of leadership styles, I think that being good at the technical things and being organized is an asset. I think that I had that to a certain extent. Obviously, I didn’t have a technical I wish I had more technical skill, particularly in relation to Salesforce. And if I’m honest, I think that just to ease my understand didn’t have the products and the way it would have helped. I’ve got a reasonably good rudimentary understanding. But had I’ve been starting again, rather than doing an apprenticeship and getting in gasfitting. If I’d have done the start off with the technical qualification or the degree, that would have been a great asset. And then after that, then I really should have started. It’s all about empathy. And about, you know, bringing people on getting the right opinions. Because no, because despite debates about what we’re going to do is this, this could expand this, you know, okay, what are our options, and the experts say, versus this business? Okay, based on that, what you’ve told me, it’s that one now let’s get on with it. So it’s that ability to, to be empathetic, and listen, but at the same time, be willing to make the decisions and get on with it and stand by your decisions. You know, if you if you say that this is the way we want to go, I’m quite happy to say I’ve had to make that decision because we ain’t got time. And this isn’t why I justify it, if anyone questions it not to be fit, and not that anyone ever has. But that’s my perspective
Pei Mun Lim 41:06
on it. Right now, thank you very much. And I was just thinking that I want to be mindful of your time because I know you’ve got to do your car.
John Giannini 41:22
30 3040 minutes if you need it. It’s up to you.
Pei Mun Lim 41:27
I’ve got another podcast to record straight off to you. So sure, but I just wanted to thank you very much for making the time for me and so good to catch up. And there are some questions that I didn’t get around to ask. So maybe at some point, there’s a part two.
John Giannini 41:47
If it’s worthwhile, then I’ll be delighted.
Pei Mun Lim 41:49
Okay, so anyway, thank you again, John. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
John Giannini 41:55
My pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me