Damien Davis of ServiceNow continues to share how his personal challenges have shaped his leadership approach and drive for impact. He recounts his journey of overcoming loss, advocating for mental health, and using his experiences to fuel resilience and growth. Damien discusses the power of authenticity in business, the importance of listening to customers, and how organisations can shift from a product-driven to an outcome-driven mindset. He also shares practical tips for building a strong personal brand on LinkedIn and highlights how ServiceNow fosters transparency, employee engagement, and AI-driven business transformation.

Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with

your hosts, me, Matt Best and Jonny Adams. In this podcast,

we'll be sharing insights from our combined 30 plus years

experience and hearing from other industry leaders to get

their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in

modern business. We'll cover all aspects of leadership, sales,

account development and customer success, alongside other

critical elements required to build an effective growth engine

for your business. This podcast is aimed at leaders from exec

all the way down to line managers. Hello. Welcome to the

Growth Workshop Podcast with myself, Matt Best and Jonny

Adams.

Well, we're super lucky Matt, that we've got

Damien Davies from ServiceNow. He has got a great career at

ServiceNow, one of the largest organizations, over 26,000

individuals, and he's one of the first 100 employees there.

Damien, knowing a little bit about you and your own personal

life and the journey that you've been on, there's normally the

way that the personal world of people's lives can cross over

with the career. And so how is your personal life you know, in

the last number of years impacted your own growth in your

career and so forth. Share a little bit about that, if that's

okay.

Yeah, sure. Look, I've been quite comfortable

telling my personal story for anyone that doesn't know.

Literally, at the time I joined ServiceNow, so back in 2011 I

actually made international news headlines just prior to joining

service now because I was part of a small charity team that

infamously climbed the wrong mountain as part of the three

peaks challenge. Rewind slightly. I tragically lost a

very close family friend. His name was Wayne Wilson. I lost

him to leukemia, and he was just 26 years old. And it was, it

was, it was obviously tragic, very upsetting. So me and his

brother, we formed the charity team set off to do the three

peaks challenge. And you know, when we messed it up, we climbed

a mountain called Stop ban instead of Ben Nevis. People say

how I was on. Have I got news for you? The BBC satirical news

show, it made headlines outside of the UK, and the extra

publicity resulted in a lot of laughs and a lot of fundraising

for leukemia research. And Wayne's mum nominated me to

carry the Olympic torch in the 2012 games as part of their

heroes in the community, you know, campaign, and I was

chosen, and I carried the Olympic torch, and I was proud

enough to keep it, lucky enough to keep it it hangs on the Mall

in my home office. So if you're on a zoom or a team school with

me, you might see it in the background on my home office.

Fast forward a decade, and in 2020 I tragically lost my

brother Kieran to suicide and a close family friend Greg also to

suicide in the same year, and that gave me motivation to

really promote well being and mental health and suicide

awareness. And then, of course, we went into lockdown. But as we

started to come out of the various lockdowns, people at

work said, Look, you're doing a great job on social media and

internally at ServiceNow campaigning for mental health,

people have talked about fundraising ideas, and someone

said, why don't you go and redo the three peaks and do it

properly this time? So in 2022, redid, the three peaks

challenge, smashed it the right one. Yeah, really strong team

raised an incredible sum of money for mind, it was a

colossal team effort, but we raised over 100,000 pounds for

mind, you know, it's just opened doors and opportunities I then

get invited along to come and do podcasts, to go and be an after

dinner speaker, to tell my story and turning some of that tragedy

into triumph. And I actually read very recently that, like,

grief doesn't just break us, it actually breaks us open, but

what we use to fill the gaps is very much what can change the

outset of our lives. And I know I can wallow in pity or I can do

something really positive about it, and I think that goes back

to my mantra of making an impact, and why I'm very, you

know, passionate, enthusiastic, and probably most of the time,

very positive about making a difference and turning those

very sad stories into positive outcomes.

Thank you for sharing that and your openness

as well. Does it drive you, Damien, does it? Does it get you

up in the morning that this, this feeling, and in that sense?

Yep, let's do this in a positive mindset. And

mindset is everything. So, yeah, it absolutely drives me, very

driven, very focused, very determined.

And as this sort of that formulation between, this

is a people oriented podcast, also, it's the business sort of

element as well. When you go through those lessons and those

experiences in life, how have you taken the experiences with

your your brother, Wayne, that the three peaks and let's not

talk about the first attempt. Let's talk about the second

attempt, because that's brilliant. How can you

transition some of those experiences into into your

working world? Are there specific things that have helped

you?

Absolutely, and again, look, every day in my

job, it's about having that positive mindset, like, what's

today's task? What's today's goal? You know, I've met with

customers this week talking about some negative experiences,

but like, say, I just look at it as feedbacks a gift, and I'm

gonna go me. It's not personal. They want to turn something

negative into a positive. They're all supporters and

champions. They. Of the company, and I love the product, they

just had a negative experience. And my opportunity, in my role,

was to listen to that, and I say, channel it into one of

those buckets. Just approach it with a positive mindset. You

know, it could have woken up that morning, had a really

rubbish day, and taken it on the chin and taken it rather

personally, but no, just take it objectively. So I'm turning some

of those, you know, personal, you know, experiences into a

work experience, and it, I say, just makes me very driven and

very focused.

One thing that fascinates me about that Damien

is I have a background in customer success and running

Customer Success teams, building Customer Success organizations.

And I think so often, especially with those new into that career,

think of customer success and think of customer support and

all of those different things that we that we do with our

customers as we're working not against them, but not

necessarily seeing them side by side. And I think actually, what

you've just shared there, and it's linked, for me, this links

all the way right back to your sort of authenticity point

earlier on in the discussion, having that authenticity around

wanting to listen to the customer and wanting to

understand their challenges so that you can help them is

fundamentally why you know why we're doing this and how we can

be successful. If you're out there thinking, what do I need

to do to be successful in a career, a customer facing

career, be it sales, be it CS, account management, marketing,

whatever that might be, actually, authentically

listening and seeking to understand the challenge so that

you can help someone. I mean, it's probably the foundation of

of any of those roles and success in those roles. Would

100% and I think I'm lucky that I come from that

you agree?

support background. Not everyone in CS leadership does. It's not

just authenticity actually gives me credibility because I've

walked in their shoes, I've been on the Help Desk, I've had the

headset, I've done the login and flogging who in some first line

support hasn't done that at some point in their career, you know?

But like, I'm able to listen with credibility because I can

empathize with some of the challenges. But what something I

heard quite recently was, let's stop talking about products,

solutions, technology, let's just talk about what is the

business outcome. So it doesn't matter if the customer is in

pharmaceutical in financial services, public sector,

whatever the organization, whatever the role, there is a

business objective and a business outcome. How can we use

our various products, solutions and technologies to drive that

business outcome, so listen to what they're actually trying to

achieve, and then figure out how we get there. So I think that's

the foundation.

So I've got a bee in my bonnet about this, right?

Okay, and it's a bit of a challenge, because as an

organization, we truly believe in outcomes. My opinion of

software sales as a whole, if we think about the professionals

within that organization, I feel like there's still a gap of

organizations being outcome focused in software. What I mean

is, for example, as consultants, we have to be a holistic,

strategic focus, because some of our work is abstract. It's not a

product, etc. Do you think as a whole, across all sort of

software providers and and that area of the world, you know,

huge, huge businesses right out there. Do you think sales teams

and business and commercial teams are truly strategic and

focused around those aspects, or are they just sort of siloed

around just selling products, iconic convey about and

transaction? And what's your view?

My view is, I think it's probably somewhere in

between. Think everybody has the desire to do that. Maybe they

haven't matured or set themselves up to truly see that

North Star, but certainly in ServiceNow, I see a huge want to

do it, and it's all about working together as a team and,

like say, listening to the customer, understanding what

their problem is, and whether you're a solution consultant in

pre sales, whether you're a client director or an account

exec, whether you're in customer success, whether you're in

development, product management or engineering, everyone is

working towards a common goal. And it might sound like it's so

you know, too good to be true, but everyone is working with

that goal in mind, and then it's up to the leadership team to

make sure that they're not operating in silos, and that we

bring everyone together to work towards that common goal.

How have you and the team at ServiceNow been able to

to execute that practically? Because, again, a background in

in software technology, and I think a lot of a lot of it comes

down to agility. For me is that, you know, you pick up those

startup organizations in there, and everyone's really, really

clear on what it is that you're driving everyone can think in

that way. And then you get through those different phases,

and maybe get to phase four to Phase Five of the journey, and

some of that gets a bit lost in, or can get lost in some areas.

I'm not saying it happens all of the time, but there's obviously

that message from the top that says, This is what we're doing.

But how does that distill down to individual leaders and to

individual teams?

Well, think it's all about communication and

transparency. Now, let's be quite clear, it's not always

brilliant, right? I mean, I've been through some some internal

restructuring and reorganizations myself over the

last 12 months, and you know, everyone has a desire to do it

brilliantly. HR, a great corporate comms team. Be great.

Sometimes, when you have restructured and

reorganizations, you know, you get the rumor mill people talk,

and that rumor mill can sometimes move faster than the

corporate comms plan. So it's about leaders getting in front

of that and how they address it and tackle it. Like say, we

don't always get it right all the time, but then take that as

a learning failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. I

know it's such a cliche term, but it is just because we don't

always get it right. If you have the will and the desire to get

it right, let's take where it didn't go right as a learning

opportunity and make it better next time. Is that fair?

I think so. And that maturity of the organization to

do that, and I think it's sort of permission as well. And that

goes back to that authenticity point again, which is, if you're

setting out in your career, or you're looking for the next

step, you don't have to be something different at work,

bringing your authentic self and how you working out, how that

then fits into the organization, and how you can leverage that.

Otherwise it becomes very, very hard work.

Exactly, and look, 26 plus 1000 employees,

right? 10 billion in revenue. These are figures that are

publicly listed. We're still growing at 22% year on year.

Growth, even at those staggering numbers, we've added nearly

10,000 people over the last five years. When you grow at that

pace, not everything is going to go flawlessly. So we need to

work out where things went wrong. There are almost

certainly individuals in the organization that have not had

the best ride or the best career time, but we also get loads of

accolades that are employee driven glass door and various

recognition that doesn't come without a good culture and

without the will and the embracement or the embracing of

those employee engagement programs we spoke about earlier.

So that shows that when you get those employee surveys and those

employee engagement scores that most people are getting it

right, and then we can use those people that aren't as a learning

opportunity.

But if we look at the business, a lot of

organizations are talking about AI, and AI is all about the

future, and people find it hard as humans, to look to the

future. It can be sometimes creates anxiety or a little bit

of concern, but ServiceNow have been on this great journey. What

does 10 years look like from here about ServiceNow, I really

want you to paint that picture for us. If you can do it.

Crikey, we'll be on the moon by then. As a kid, I

was always a fan of science fiction. Tomorrow's World,

watching that and watching like what does it look like in the

future? What does ServiceNow look like in 10 years? I don't

have a crystal ball, but I see it as again, you know, maybe a

trillion dollar company, the stock price would be 4x, what it

is now, maybe we've got 100,000 employees, I don't know. But

ultimately, I'd like to see ServiceNow in every single

organization in the world, whether they're a small

business, big business benefiting from that AI

automation technology that frees humans up to better things.

Well, I think Damien, the reason why we love

having guests like you on the podcast is all about simple,

practical frameworks. We're all about giving back to the

audience, and we're going to transition into a bit of that,

where you're going to share a few ideas for the audience. We

work with a lot of professional services and financial services

individuals actually consultants themselves. And it's all about

building the brand and building their own brand. And you've

really driven that. You've got over 10,000 followers on

LinkedIn. I'm sure you get more inflows of requests than

probably you going out in the market. But if you had to build

a bit of a framework to help an individual build a brand on

LinkedIn, what would be a couple of the points that you would

share?

Yeah. Look, I really enjoy using LinkedIn as a

platform, like other social media platforms, it had its

flaws, but the benefits are the opportunities that it provides.

I think I've been using it for over a decade. Started out by

putting an online TV on, you know, and hoping that a

recruiter might see it and get me better job opportunities.

Then realizing that actually there's a social feed to it as

well. More consciously in the last two years, I took a very

deliberate intention of increasing my personal brand.

LinkedIn is a great platform for that, and I just read some

tutorials. It's like, right engage with meaningful content,

right to other people in the ServiceNow ecosystem, other

business leaders like I mentioned, Stephen Bartlett,

right? You know, looking at his content, engaging with that by

liking and commenting on his posts and other leadership

posts, because then anyone in my network, it will come up in

their feed the other and say, Oh, Damien Davies like this, or

Damien Davies commented on this. So showing me, but it's also

showing meaningful content. If they then like that and read it,

they're like, ah, Damien, refer me to this content. So in the

back of their mind. That's one way. Of course, I'll post my own

content, and, you know, I'll post updates on service now,

clearly, on impact on our ecosystem. Quite often turn in

human elements, because people love to see the human side of

it, right? Like, if I'm traveling or I'm doing a

podcast, I'll post about it on LinkedIn. People like, what's

Damien up to today? You know, what a service now up to? And

it's that human element. It might be a happy hour in a bar,

it might be in the gym, it might be in a podcast, it might be a

conference or an event. People like to see what's going on in

the world. So publishing stuff like that, as well as in between

that, you know, championing mental health, talking about

fundraising act. Activities, or just general tips and tricks on

mental health and well being and being vulnerable and

comfortable, sharing my personal story, giving that authentic

brand. Like I said, brand is about what people say about we

can market ourselves, but brand is what people say about you

when you're not in the room. And look at all these companies with

great brands, Nike, coca, Cola, we can name drop all these

companies that have got a great brand have invested heavily so

that we talk about them when they're not marketing

themselves. ServiceNow has been very intentional marketing

ourselves as the AI platform for business transformation. There

you go, Chief Brand Officer, I name dropped that one in market

is how we want to people to perceive us. Brand is how others

see us and personal brand is no different. So if you're in your

career, whatever level you're at maturity, you want to use

LinkedIn as a framework. Yeah, start posting a couple of times

a week. Don't do it every day, or certainly not two or three

times a day, because you don't want it to be noise and lost.

But couple of meaningful things. Also. Think about what you're

writing. Is it going to resonate with people that are reading it?

Are they going to gain something from it? Either, Oh yeah, look,

you know, Damien's at another conference, or he's on a plane

again, or, Oh, actually, Damien was talking to customer X, and

they discussed this topic, and that really resonated with me.

Share that. Share content that you think is going to land and

inspire conversation. But like so it's not just about posting

your own content. It's about how you engage with others as well.

So it's a long winded answer to tips and tricks.

You know, just on that point of view. I think

what's really interesting, it's more of a question, Has LinkedIn

evolved too closely to Instagram? Is there too much

personal posts, or do you think it's businessy enough? What's

your viewpoint on that?

Well, if it's too personal and doesn't mean

anything, I'll just scroll past it. You know, some people may

choose to do personal, personal and that's great because, like,

say, humanizes us, right? It's just a social media platform.

Like, if we're meeting in an office, and we then go for a

happy hour in the pub, and we're talking about personal stuff,

like, social media is just the digital version of that, of what

we would do in our business lives anyway. Like, if I'm

traveling to Sheffield, London, Miami, wherever I'm going, and I

meet someone, and then we're gonna go and have a

conversation. Oh, you know, if you've got a family, are you

into sports? Sharing personal stuff is fine. If it's relevant.

It's not Facebook, it's not Instagram, and it is how I view

it, as the business social media platform, but sharing personal

stories and personal wins, like, if you've achieved something,

why not share an achievement? Even if your family's achieved

something, like, let's say my son plays drums, or, you know,

my other son, you know, both of them do kickbox, and they just

got their latest belt. If I want to share that with my business

network, that's because I have a lot of friends in my business

network who I want to share that story with. But I'm also

thinking about, how am I going to share that story? Like on

Facebook? It might just be, congrats boys. You know, you got

your blue belt on the work thing. It might be really proud

of my boys. This is a result of grit and determination. You

know, don't make it too fake. Make it authentic, but make it

relevant.

I just wanted to add on the on that sort of, that

branding piece. And I think what's really important there,

Damien, as you said, is the reminding people. It's how

they're perceived. How well do I know what that is? How well? How

do you test that?

I don't know, ask people.

But do you... is that something that you would do?

I mean LinkedIn as metrics and stats, right? You

can go to your profile and you can see, right, how are my posts

performing. You can see what your your engagement score is in

terms of people that actually like comment and react to it.

And you can see your impression score. Marketers love that.

Like, if you're in marketing and you get a million impressions,

they're like, great. That's how many people have seen my

content, but then how many people have liked and commented

and engaged with that? Now, stats wise, and I've done the

analysis, LinkedIn says that 2% is good. So if you've got 2%

engagement, that's good. And my personal content. You know, when

I track it, somewhere between one and a half and three so it

shows that it's engaging, it's meaningful. So that means, if

1000 people like it, 1000 people see it, and only 20 people

comment on it, that's actually pretty good by LinkedIn

standards. And that, you know, you can search that on what the

engagement score and what's good engagement. So that's one way

people can track and measure if they feel that, you know, is it

making a difference?

Yeah. And I guess the other way, as you said, is just

ask people. It's like, you know, talk to clients like, what's

your perception? Like? You might not ask your mates down the pub.

You might get a different response.

Sometimes you don't need to ask. I've been at

conferences and I've had people come up to me say, Oh, you don't

know me, but I follow your posts on LinkedIn, and my wife just

rolls her eyes and says, Oh, who the hell does he think he is?

And I'm like, Who's that? No idea that is great. I mean, I

get a warm feeling from that. Is there something wrong with that?

I mean, is that too vain or too much personal pride? And someone

comes and says, oh, oh, your story really resonated with me.

Or, you know, I've even had people say I was really

struggling and I read your content on your brother, and

actually, I'm in a better place now. That's life changing.

Yeah. I think that's a great place to end. Goes right

back for me to that authenticity piece, Damien. I mean, I think

this conversation is testament to how you live and breathe that

and and driving impact and really kind of bringing in.

Along those, as Jonny said, those practical tools and tips

and things that people can take away from from this discussion.

And on behalf Jonny and I've thoroughly enjoyed having you on

thank you so much for coming down.

Thanks guys, thank you for having me.

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Your feedback fuels our growth until next time, keep up that

forward thinking mindset. Goodbye.