The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:21:46 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
[00:21:46] S1: So more reinforcing, Vivint, I've always known Robert as someone who kind of sees things that others don't. And that's one of the characteristics we call out in some of the early chapters of the book around origination. Raymakers see things others don't earlier. And I always kind of knew that, but then to commit that to black and white ink and actually write it was really great, right? You can have a conversation like this, but then to actually try and put it in ink and then both agree. So it was more reinforcing of a characteristics Robert has and other rainmakers have around seeing things that others don't. And then there was just the gaps. Okay, Robert's given me credit for doing a fair manuscript. Let me tell you there's a couple of chapters in the book that weren't in the original that are now, and one's on the importance of ethics and responsibility of rainmakers. So we spend a whole chapter talking about if you are given great access to boards and CEOs as a senior person, that's a level of trust that 99.9% of people don't have. You have a responsibility to treat that information and discussion at a different level than what's in a company policy on protecting information. So that was Robert's early ad that I completely missed. [00:23:10] S0: And Robert, did you learn anything about Neil through the process that perhaps surprised you? Yeah, look, Neil and
00:23:10 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:23:10] S0: And Robert, did you learn anything about Neil through the process that perhaps surprised you? Yeah, look, Neil and [00:23:16] S2: I have always been close. We were close when we worked together. I was MC at his wedding back in the day. I felt I knew Neil really well. I didn't realize how good a write, like writing a book is different to writing a consulting report. Neil was very good at writing consulting reports, but his style of writing is very easy to read, interesting, and I learned the qualities. I sort of bowed to Neil on his ability to put down on paper thoughts and concepts in a book sense absolutely is something I've learnt out of this. And the other one is just how widely respected Neil is. When you've spent a long time in consulting, thirty years, you know a lot of people have worked for you and a lot of people move to different firms. Neil's coverage of the industry in all its respects, in all levels globally is astonishing. The number of people that know Neil, used to work for Neil, have fond memories of doing a project with Neil. That surprised me and made our collaboration on this in terms of learning from other firms very easy.
00:24:37 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:24:37] S0: Speaker Now before I get into the book and give people a bit of an entree on what they can expect, the writing process is fascinating because maybe you spoke to other authors, I love asking authors like about their writing process. Like I remember I had the former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the podcast last year and he wrote his own autobiography and one of the things he said is when he read it back to his like family or friends he would discover a lot of errors because he had to vocalize it but when he wrote them he wouldn't pick that up and that made the editing process really annoying because he would vocalize it with friends and family in the evening and then go back to the editor and say, you know what, I'll make these edits. Are there any anecdotes like that, Neil, from your own writing process in terms of how you managed to distill thoughts on paper?
00:25:26 · Neil Plumridge
[00:25:26] S1: So Robert gives me credit for the writing. We would have a conversation. I'd go away and write it as best I could, flip it back, and then I used a whole bunch of tools, AI tools. Grammarly was my favorite best friend around grammar and really trying to get some clarity in what I'm saying. I use different AI tools for research. So we would have a conversation on, say, trust in the AI area and the some emerging trust topics that we should be talking about. And so I'll call that, you know, Rachel Botsman in The UK. She's one of the leading thinkers around trust in today's world. We would go away and research what she's doing. So it was an iterative process, a bit like a consulting process, right? You kind of have some hypotheses where you want to take it and then you go and find the data that proves up, that doesn't, and then you iterate and run it through an editing process. Probably wouldn't do it again. It killed Robert and I in terms of this. But it's been a really enjoyable process and I can say that the book is full of stories and it's us sharing our stories, sharing other stories. But I personally have learnt a lot through this too. And I mentioned this at the book launch. I didn't realise the degree of how trust in professional services is different, the degree of it and magnitude, if you like, across cultures. So researching and learning about even though we've consulted in Brazil is different than Poland and different in Tokyo than different in Sydney. We've got half a chapter or chapter on that dimension. So learning is part of the writing process. It wasn't just telling our stories, it was actually a learning process too.
00:27:13 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal
[00:27:13] S2: Neil and I sort of pride ourselves on our quality of our end product. So we said to the editor before the editor had a look at a book, You won't find any typos in this book, and we're pretty confident we've got a pretty right one. Well, what we got back of made us eat humble pie a bit that we needed that edit process to correct things you've said on page eight that aren't consistent with what goes on page two ten, all of those things being picked up. The editing process certainly lifted it beyond what I thought it was going to need, but that's writing a big 300 page book is different than writing a 30 page consulting report. That's the difference. [00:28:04] S0: That is so funny and I think the premise of the book, at least my understanding the human side of exceptional performance, right? I think even my podcast, that s what we do here is reimagine the concept of a high flyer and showcase the human aspect of exceptionalism in different industries. I d love to cover some aspects of the book. Of course, we want people to buy the book and read it, but we can give them a bit of an entree. I love the story you start the book with, Neil. I think you take us into Mumbai and you're riding on the back of a client's motorbike, I believe without a helmet. Yeah. Can you just recount that day and what you learnt about business then?
00:28:43 · Neil Plumridge
[00:28:43] S1: Yeah. So I learnt that's why it's at the start of the book because it was really the pivotal moment that changed. I was successful at that point in time. I had great bookings, had great clients, mostly in Australia. I was taken into the opportunity to do a big project for a large mobile phone company in Mumbai. I was well prepared for that meeting with the client. I was the COO, had all the slide packs, had all the questions I thought were going to get asked. And then he said to me, you know, I'd arrived the night before and he said, actually, I don't want to go through your slide pack because I don't think you actually understand how business is done in India and how my business actually really works. He obviously said that politely and respectfully. So he said, leave your jacket behind. We went downstairs, jumped on a couple of motorbikes, and he then took me to where they were selling mobile phones in the markets in Mumbai. It was an exhilarating, scary emotion all the emotions you've ever got experience. But I really learned that to be an effective consultant, it's not in the boardroom, it's not in a nice glass office. It's actually you've got to be at the coalface to really understand how that business works at the coalface and then how he interacted with his customers. And so I learnt about connection before content, something we're big on as a theme. He the in the markets in Mumbai selling mobile phones and making a connection with his customers and the penny dropped for me completely that it's not about the content first. It's not about slide packs. It's not about boardrooms. It's something different.