Will Fraser is an ex-Saracens and England Rugby player, who has bought his lesson’s learned on team dynamics into his business, 100 & First. We explore the importance of fostering strong relationships and understanding within teams to maximise discretionary effort, as well as strategies for unifying disparate departments, such as marketing and sales. We also share insight on the significance of self-reflection, continuous learning, and tangible actions in addressing business challenges and driving growth.

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+ 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.

We're thrilled to have Will Fraser join us today for the conversation.

So Will has a successful international and club rugby career in rugby

union, playing for Saracens and winning many trophies along the way.

Will retired back in 2017 and since then has been building out a

professional services consultancy firm focused on creating effective

culture within your business.

So as is customary at the top of all of our podcasts, I'd like to kick us off

really by welcoming Jonny and as ever,

as my cohost and Will Fraser to the conversation and as is customary, Jonny,

what's what's been good in your week?

What's been good?

I finally kicked myself up the arse and had been completing my

chartership in Management Consultancy.

What was interesting though, it asked me a question about what am I going to do

to continue my own personal development?

And it did prompt the thinking, which I think is always important.

I don't know about both of you, actually, what are you going to do to

continue to grow and develop yourself?

And I've committed to completing a coaching course by the end of the year,

the reason for that is that I do an awful lot of coaching, but I'm a firm

believer that learning the theoretical understanding and the frameworks that sits

around something is really helpful to when becoming more proficient in something.

So there we go.

That's what I've been doing, getting myself moving, thinking about what

I need to do by the end of the year, and I'm going to commit to doing

a professional coaching course.

Blimey, that's that's a longer list than we normally have, Jonny.

Thank you.

And and Will, welcome.

Thanks so much for taking the time and chatting to Jonny and I today.

What's gone on in your world this week?

Firstly, thank you for having me.

Secondly,

My interesting thing is a lot less professional than Jonny's.

Knowing Jonny, I wasn't expecting him to come out with something so prim and

proper and personal development growth y.

My week so there's a show in the West End that's been based on my younger brother,

he wrote a book, and the book got adapted to a musical, so I went to see that,

and it was quite a nice connection of two important bits of my life, because

I went to see the show, and the Saracen squad, the team I used to play for, the

current squad, all went to see it as well that was a really cool cool evening

out for me to have these two parts of my life connected together, which was

cool, so completely opposite to Jonny's.

Listeners can decide which one's more interesting and more fun.

I have to say that the show is absolutely outstanding.

It brings a tear to your eye and it's a wonderful story to share

some of the history that's gone on for Henry and your family.

It's been unbelievable.

It's very surreal to watch a significant moment of your family's life played

out on stage was played back to you.

And it's and the whole family, me, obviously, the connection

to my older brother with Jonny they're both into uni together.

So someone's playing Tom, someone's playing me and my youngest brother Dom.

And yeah, it's unbelievably surreal.

And the uptake of it has been phenomenal.

It's very cool.

Very cool.

Gosh, yeah, I think that trumps any introduction to be honest.

I hope it at least trumps Jonny's I think.

If it didn't trump, if it didn't trump committing to a coaching course,

then the show would be terrible.

We should have covered this before.

I would have,

I'm glad you went first, to be

Yeah.

Here we go, Matt.

A

Setting the bar nice and nice and low.

I'm probably going to come in even lower than that.

So I think in my last week what's been quite exciting and again fairly

work related, much like you, Jonny is It's kicking off a coaching

program with a group of clients.

And actually, I think, and loosely tying this to your share their Will is just

encouraging people to reflect back.

It's so interesting when I guess you're forced to reflect back and

look at somebody else playing out a really critical point in your life.

But it's a lot of what we do is helping people in taking a step out

of themselves almost and being able to, being able to look around and see.

What's going on and maybe put themselves in other people's shoes.

Yeah, slightly tenuous link there, but yeah, that's that's,

it's

always fun to start training program and link nonetheless.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for joining us today, as I already said, as someone who's

emerged out of this successful sporting career into a business context.

We'd imagine that, there are some real parallels between

those two environments for you.

And today we're really looking forward to exploring those with you.

And our listeners are going to want to learn from your experience

and how culture can support their business and personal growth.

A big, great place to start, perhaps, just to understand a bit more about

what prompted you to start 100 & First

yeah, the team I played for probably one of the most

successful English club sides in English rugby history and it all

happened in a relatively short space of time when you look back.

So we've had this 10, 15 year stretch where, you know the club have won, I

think six or seven premiership titles, three European cups, produced a handful

of international players of which I wasn't one, I appreciate you're interested in it.

It was England A.

Yeah.

You could say it's international, it's not

International.

Did you wear the red rose?

Did you wear the red

I did, as they say in the show, it was England

B that anyone can do, but

hey ho.

And to be honest with you, that experience of being part of that

environment is entirely moulded my world view when it comes to teams

and how you build them and entirely

how you,

morphed my mind into why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

So the premise of that success, obviously you have very talented

people who are very good at rugby, but the premise of that success is

actually was built away from the pitch.

And it was almost this focus on how do you get the right people in the

room with shared goals, a higher purpose, shared values, all the

stuff LinkedIn every single day.

And it almost becomes so generic now, but actually doing it is very different.

And then living it is very different again.

So I was really fortunate that I got to be part of a group who, who

genuinely was so bought into that.

And it was such a focus.

And then we got the rugby was the by product of it.

So really, when I look at that journey and what the club did in getting to that point

fundamentally, that's what we're looking to help teams with through 100 & First.

We were very honest and transparent with what we do.

And the first thing we say to any client or potential client is there

is nothing we can do to directly make you better at what you do.

I've never done your job.

I've never worked in your organization.

It'll be unbelievably management consultative of me.

To pretend that I could make you better directly what you do.

What we do, your job's irrelevant to what we're looking at.

What we do is everything before the job.

We're looking at you as a group of people.

How do we get you as a group of people to function as well

as you possibly can together?

And if we do that, then what happens as a consequence is

you become better at your job.

you're more emotionally connected to one another.

You understand the value of what you're doing into the end

goal of what the business does.

You can have better conversations, we can be objective, we can challenge,

we can all these sorts of things that are irrelevant to the specifics

of a job and what a sector does.

It's specific to a group of people.

And that's really what we did as a club.

So the two are very intrinsically linked in terms of taking what I

experienced and it's all not just anecdotal, it's very much backed up

by data, by research and you look at any kind of sustainably successful,

and when we talk about sustainable, we mean over long periods of time.

The only commonality between sustainably successful teams is actually the

connectivity of the people within them and the structural cohesion and social

cohesion that comes as a result of that.

So what we do is we look at how do we help implement that with

teams, yeah, across all sectors.

That's

interesting.

And

Just

building on that one.

And you shared a lot already there, but I'm curious to understand where

you start with something like that.

You talked about not coming in and,

And trying to help people in changing and developing skills, which actually

is a lot of what Jonny and I will do with our clients, where we bring in

best practice and, and many decades of collective experience to drive that.

But I'd love to understand where you start with the business.

So let's

say, a business decides yet 100 & First.

This is what we need.

And we talk a lot about culture on this podcast, right?

And I think the culture is clearly a big part of this.

But where do you start?

So the reality is, we don't do the specifics of the job

because people like you do that.

Thankfully, we don't need to, right?

But the reality is people come to us when there's a challenge.

And when there's a crisis or when something's happening within the business,

because the thing with, again, culture is one of these words that is just so

overused, I think, and people don't really actually understand what it is.

And culture to one group is completely different to the culture to another group.

And I think that by definition is culture, right?

It's very specific to the group of people that are intertwined within it.

And the reality of it is that we don't know whether the culture's

good or bad until something happens.

Because life just goes on, work just goes on.

So there needs to be this kind of circuit break that forces you to stop and think.

And that circuit break within businesses is usually some form of crisis,

some form of challenge, adversity a strategic decision, a change in

leadership, but something happens.

And it's when that thing happens, is then when we get brought in

because it's then how do we manage

this?

And in the managing of it is when you unearth okay we can't manage this until

we actually know who we are as a group to begin with, because until we know

that whatever plan we come up with, we were not bought into, and we're not

giving it everything we can because there's all these questions in the back

of the head that we haven't answered.

What do we stand for?

Actually, do we think the same thing?

Do you think the same thing about the company values that I think about

the company values and we did operate off these like myths and assumptions

that because we all work for the same company, we all think the same thing.

So the reality is a complete opposite.

And we said if we don't know that it's a complete opposite.

Then we're never fully gonna be able to deal with whatever it is we're

dealing with because we're operating on completely different levels without

knowing that so we miss all these kind of percentage points within it.

So to go back to your question, our starting point is usually something

happens in a business and the realities as well, because we don't

look at the job, we look at people.

So fundamentally, the funnel of problems that we get presented with

is so wide, the solution is so tight.

Because it comes back to people.

Even if you're a sole trader fixing a computer, you've still got to buy

that computer from someone else.

So everything comes back to people somewhere down the track.

So for example we had a client come to us, the kind of global board levels

say, Oh, we're really bad at giving each other feedback, want to work on feedback.

And you go, okay that's fine.

We can set that up.

But the reality is feedback can only go so far if you don't

fundamentally know each other.

If there's not an environment where you can actually give objective feedback

and know it's going to be taken objectively because the intent is right

and we're all trying to get after the same thing, it doesn't matter how many

coaching sessions you do of feedback because only so far it will take you.

So what we need to get down to is actually the cohesion of the group.

and understand how well do we actually know each other to enable an environment

that will allow for feedback to be given and received and all that kind of stuff.

I'm curious cause Matt and I, when we were preparing for

this session, we were really super curious about what you do from a

conceptual to a contextual perspective.

What Could you describe, you don't have to use client names, but could

you describe like what that actually looks like when you deliver the outcome?

Maybe something from a tangible perspective, because it's great

to hear how you're delivering against that people change.

So I think how we deliver is probably the most kind

of unique bit about what we do.

So our tagline is using the power of incredible real life

experiences to drive change.

So again, I make no bones about the fact that I am the most under qualified

person in this entire industry.

I used to chuck a ball around for a living.

That's, I'm not, but

well, but only England A, but only England A,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's subjective, yeah.

My dad tells me I was quite good.

no, your dad told you rubbish.

Cause we know your dad, but

So in terms of what we do, so the premise of that is,

is the reality of how we're wired.

Is we rely on stories, right?

That's how, even to the dawn of of mankind, if you were a hunter gatherer,

you went to a river to go get some food and there was a lion on the

riverbank, the way you told your tribe to not go to that riverbank is telling

the story of when you went to that riverbank and you saw a lion there.

So storytelling is in our DNA and we need evidence.

Like we need a hook.

So if we're going to go in and talk to teams and tell them that actually

to create long term sustainable success, essentially we, you've

got to spend time with each other.

You've got to get to know each other, build connectivity or this sort of stuff.

If we can help you with that til we're blue in the face.

But if we have nothing to evidence it and nothing to get the juices flowing, there's

no business, like no one's buying that.

So what we do is we use an incredible real life experience in that field.

So for example, using that example of cohesion, we basically have a number of

people we work with who have incredible real life experiences, from Henry, my

brother, to his life changing accident, through to people that have built

and scaled, million pound businesses through to people that work in sports

psychology and everything in between.

And what we do is, and we're understanding what the fundamental

challenge of the client is.

So forget the job, forget what they do.

What is the fundamental challenge?

The fundamental challenge here is actually we need to get to know each other better.

Okay, cool.

So let's bring in sports psychologists.

who talks using sport as the incredible life experience and

actually busting all the myths and assumptions we have around performance.

We assume this gives us performance, but actually it doesn't.

We assume it's this, and using sport as an example, using data, using

research, showing that what, when you look at every , successful sports

team, whether it's basketball, whether it's, football, whether it's rugby,

the only thing they have in common is that their cohesion data is through the

roof comparative to every other team.

And cohesion data is essentially how long have they spent playing, doing

the job together, and how many people within that team have been internally

promoted or produced through their system.

Now, so he will, David will come in, He'll do his bit.

It's an hour and a half.

Then what we do is go, okay, cool.

We've got all the juices flowing.

We've heard some epic stories and it's super interesting.

Essentially, let's now take David out of this.

Let's take all the teams you heard out of this and let's take the frameworks,

the language, the research, the data we've heard, reframe, repackage,

reapply it into your context to help you build cohesion within your team.

And that's then what we do as 100 & First.

We frame it as, we've all been to company conferences and, industry

wide conferences, whatever it is, and an inspirational speaker

comes along and they're awesome.

And you go home, you talk to your partner, your friends, your family,

you go Matt, you were amazing.

Like this, that and the other.

We go to bed, wake up the next morning, nothing changes.

We just go straight back to what we did the day before.

But by definition, there's an inspirational person there,

who has so much content that we can use, but we don't use it.

So what we're saying is

we're going to use it.

We're going to be that bridge.

So how do we take all the good stuff we've heard and make it

relevant to the challenge, the specific challenge or crisis or

change that you're going through?

And then we then are that bridge.

So we then facilitate that and do all the follow on and all that kind of stuff.

When you talk about the sporting context here and, , we

use sporting examples a lot when we're talking to clients, right?

We know they're fairly compelling and in a lot of cases, sport is thought

leading in these sorts of areas and.

and I were talking the other day just around what businesses look

like if they were a sport team.

And, there are some businesses where.

If you translated that into a match, they wouldn't even be on

the same pitch, let alone passing the ball in the right direction.

And it's bringing those businesses or bringing those

groups or those teams together.

And I think, when you talk about what culture is, it's,

that's a big part of it, right?

Is that sort of collaboration and like you say, is how it's about

how people engage with one another.

What I'm really curious to understand is you talk about that growing up

together through, through a business.

I know in lots of sports teams, it's the, you can predict a sports team success

based on what their junior teams look at, the shape of their junior teams,

but in sport and in business, it's quite hard to retain that structure,

retain those people, continue to motivate those people in that way.

What's the advice that you would give to your clients around, Either a new

business that's quite young that doesn't have that depth or a business that's maybe

gone through lots of changes and hasn't got, hasn't got a really strong basis or

foundation.

So I think the first thing is there needs to be real like

deliberate intent to go down this route.

So it's, we talk to our clients a lot around if you're going to

build teams or view teams this way, it's a philosophical choice.

Because it's going to take time and by saying philosophical what

you're saying is like we're, this is an emotional thing that we're in

this, we're going down this track.

But then that's backed up or the research.

So as I said before, every bit of research out there in this space.

Tells us that actually the longer you can keep people together as you

build structure cohesions, the longer you can keep people together, what

you get out the back end of that is social cohesion, and that's where you

get the performance benefits because you build transactive memory, tacit

learning, you understand each other.

And we know that successful teams aren't built on what

people know and what they can do.

It's built on the connection between a group of people and how quickly

can you problem solve and how.

honest and objective can you be that someone's bullsed up, as

opposed to just blindly not saying anything, knowing there's an error.

And then six months later, Oh yeah, I thought that wasn't right.

Why didn't you say anything?

These things that happen every day, every single day in teams.

And we don't appreciate and performance we ask for performance

is based on myths, right?

So just trying to bust those myths.

So going to your point I think it's hard, you can't really give advice because

it's entirely nuanced and dependent on the group but what I'd say is, there's

a guy called Alex Pentland, he's done loads of research in space and it's

quite categorical, every organisation has a natural rate of churn, however

big or small, there's a natural rate of churn because families are going to

change people's dynamics and financial situations are going to change, you

have kids or whatever it is, so you, that's naturally going to happen.

He says it's mental that we add to that.

that we deliberately and intentionally add to that already natural rate of churn.

When we know that changing people is one of the biggest

things that hampers performance.

So again, there's this myth of the portability of talent.

It's right.

We can go to market, we can buy the most skilled person and that's the person

that's going to change us, turn us around and that never happens or very rarely

happens because Talent is encased in a group of people, right?

So the only reason that I was a relatively good rugby player is

because I was in an amazing team.

I'm not actually individually that good of a rugby player.

But because I was in a system that allowed me to flourish, that allowed me to do

the things that I was good at, that I've, the perception was that I was all right.

And I think when we think about teams in that way it's changing

how we view the makeup of a team.

If we fundamentally change how we view the makeup of a team, then

philosophically that changes how we then manage teams and how we build

teams and how we build for the future.

So if we build teams as independent units of skill,

the incentive is to go and buy the best independent unit of skill.

So therefore, if someone doesn't hit a certain ridiculous metric that's

essentially been plucked out of thin air, We get rid of them, and we

bring someone else in, who invariably doesn't hit the same made up metrics.

So we go to them, and we just have this kind of, until we do it ten

times, someone comes in and performs really well, and that one time out

of ten is what we then base the rest of our decision making off of.

Oh yeah, we work with this person, so it will work with everyone else.

When the reality is the complete opposite.

football is a great example, right?

Statistically.

The best thing that can happen to a football club is having a transfer

ban put on it, statistically.

it forces you to work with what you've got,

You don't, because the football is run on this myth that you can

just go to market, buy the best, how many players do we see in,

Europe, on the continent, are the best players in their team,

best players in the world.

They come over to a premiership club and they flop.

we assume it's that person, right?

We assume it's something that happened on the flight, on the way over.

But the reality is, they're in a brand new system, with brand new people.

Some might not even speak the language.

They've moved their family across into a different country.

They're in new schools.

Their partners don't know anyone.

Talent is encased in a system that's so much wider than

that person, yet we focus it.

There's a thing called Fundamental Attribution Error, which says that

we attribute the individual what can be best explained by context.

So when someone comes over and underperforming, it's unlikely to be them.

What it's more likely to be is the context of their situation.

They say there's research out there that it says it takes up to three months to

learn the language of a business, right?

Three months just to know what the hell people are talking about.

in

the corporate world what's the typical probation period for

someone starting a new job?

Yeah.

job?

Three months . I now know what all these crazy letters mean and the acronyms.

But I've not got the job.

So it's crazy.

So we're basing people, we're judging people on complete

myths and complete assumptions

I'm going to challenge you slightly and the reason why I'm curious

to get your thoughts on this is that you mentioned a minute ago around the

transfer ban and the best thing that could happen is a transfer ban I get

the context of what you're sharing.

There is the people side and building the cage.

However, as human beings, we have a ceiling of proficiency that we can

get to effectively when we're born.

We are able to have a build our intelligence in our early years.

We then form our personalities.

And then what we start to do is form our behaviors.

We have a threshold that we can get to.

If we put a transfer ban on a business, Okay.

And we were not recruiting the talent that would take us

from 20 million to 50 million.

In fact, that that would potentially not enable growth.

So there must be something else we must have with people and we must

enable some talent that needs to come to the team to carry on flourishing.

No, you're not, you're absolutely right.

So the transfer ban example because obviously the transfer

ban is for a set period of time.

So that's so for what, six months, a year, whatever it is.

So we're not saying.

a life, a lifetime transfer ban.

So that's for a set period of time.

So that's why you see these spikes because all of a sudden for six months, people

just have to get to know each other.

now what football then does is rather than understand that and

supplement with the right people, it then just overhauls everything.

You take Chelsea as a prime example.

So Lampard comes in during a transfer ban.

They finished fourth, great result for him as a, First major club,

great result for Chelsea at the time.

Chancellor Bank gets lifted, he spends 300 million pounds on players, gets sacked.

Graeme Potter comes in, sends another 300 million pounds on players, loses

10 games in a row, gets sacked.

It's just the model.

But to your point of businesses so going back to this natural churn, what

the natural churn allows you to do is supplement the existing people you've got.

So someone's naturally leaving for whatever

So for the 20 percent churn that we typically see being

researched per

This is it.

year,

we can then, we can replenish that with

This is it.

to take us from,

and the question

is what are the what is the person you're bringing in?

That's the recruitment side of them, because what are you recruiting against?

Are you recruiting against metrics and these made up things, or are you

recruiting someone that's actually going to fit into the system?

I guess that comes into the next the question I've been kicking

around as well, which is, deliver to approximately 50 clients a year

we deliver, sales transformation, enablement training and coaching.

And I've reflected on the last five years and thought what is some

of the things that make programs work and programs not work?

And actually a client said this yeah, prospect said this

to me a couple of years ago.

I thought it was one of the best questions, tell me what,

tell me why programs fail.

I was like, that's such a great question.

And I feel like the, one of the top three things, if not one of the top

things is the fact that businesses.

And their approach to development and the leadership approach to development stinks.

My opinion is that, that leaders don't believe that professional

development is a really important part towards a business's culture

and a business's plan for the year.

If you had a group of individuals that had that inward perception of, The fact that

development isn't that good, but actually they say outwardly to the business.

Yeah.

I believe in, development.

Is there anything that you would recommend that the people need to

change to really buy into development?

I think it's, you're absolutely bang on by the way.

And we see that all the time, not a lot to be fair, but we have had people

bring us in purely for perception.

It's the need to be seen that we're doing something.

Without any real care of what that thing is or the outcome is.

I think to get people to buy in again, people need evidence, right?

No one does anything without evidence or without an incentive.

Every decision we make in life is based on an incentive.

So if I'm going to go

out tonight and have a ton of beers.

It's because I love beer and I'm having a great time.

If I'm going to go out tonight and not drink, it's because I'm going to

feel better in the morning, right?

So everything has an, that's a bit of a rogue example to use, but

everything has an incentive, right?

So again, going to your point of how do we, how can you change that

perception around past development?

There's got to be, there's got to be an incentive.

There's got to be evidence.

There's got to be, because otherwise what, if you're not going to, you

don't, no one changes their mind for no reason, So no one's going to change

their perception without something.

So what we'd say is actually.

It's all hypothetical I suppose, but let, if someone's almost got to go away

and do something on their own and then prove the impact it's had and how that

actually helps the whole, so I've gone away and I've upskilled myself in this,

by me doing that actually I've helped my team, because I'm now more proficient

in this, so I can better help this problem, which then helps the business

as a whole, and then you evidence

So you're saying that's a really interesting point, Will, because

Matt and I are working with a recruitment organization in London at the moment,

that their CEO young guy and, Part of the program is that they want the people

that are going on this change program.

which is all about key account management strategy.

They want them to evidence their learnings play that back to the business.

I guess that in itself creates an element of an incentive for if you're

not going to do a bit of pain, right?

Because you're going to turn up to your CEO and not have anything to share.

So is it, that the element of evidence and stories again is an important aspect

to change that mindset and perception.

Yeah, massively.

there's nuance, right?

You can go into there's an amazing skit by Michael McIntyre.

, I'm going to go slightly left and come back.

That so bear with me.

And he talks around this concept of when you go out for dinner, so you go out for

dinner and you order a bottle of wine, so you give them the wine menu, no one knows

what the hell any of the wines actually are, all you do is look at prices and

make sure you don't choose one that's too expensive, you don't choose one that's

too cheap, you tell the waiter has no idea what the wine is, then they come over and

you've got to stop your meal, like stare at a bottle of wine, then you've got to

taste it, and he goes on this whole thing, and essentially what he's talking about

is this, like this bullshit production.

It's complete bullshit production, and we only do it because that's

what we assume we should do, that's what you do in a restaurant,

that's what you do in a restaurant.

But he says, why am I tasting the wine to see if it's off?

I'm paying for it, you taste the wine, tell me if it's off, and if

it's off, don't serve it to me.

Like this complete kind of, the whole coffee at the end of it, he said, if I

was at home, and my wife came to me at 11.

30 at night before bed and said, do you want a coffee?

I'd say, are you mental?

No, of course I don't.

why would I want that?

I'm going to be up all night.

In a restaurant, 11.

30 at night, do you want a coffee?

Yeah, I'll have a double espresso.

It is crazy, but you do it.

And again, when you bring that into the businesses, again, going back to this

cohesion element is how many of our conversations are bullshit productions?

So how often are we saying things we think the person wants to hear as

opposed to what we actually think?

So to your point, Jonny, in terms of evidencing learnings, if I'm in a session,

I know what the CEO wants me to say.

I know what he wants me to get from this.

So I was going to go cool.

Yeah, this is what I learned.

Brilliant.

Well done.

Off you trot.

I haven't learned that at all.

I've learned squat.

And from a performance point of view, I'm much better off

going, Jonny, that was rubbish.

That was awful.

I've learned nothing from this.

We need to, cause that's when we actually shift the dial and

our ability to, okay, cool.

So we need to change the training.

We need to do whatever.

But I go in and say, it's great.

We create, we build this assumption that what we're doing is working.

And then lo and behold.

A year down the line, it's not working, and then the same person

comes back and goes, Yeah, you know what, when we ran that course,

I actually wasn't that into it.

And he goes why the hell didn't you tell me to begin with?

And again, and that whole scenario happens every single day, in every single

team, in numerous different guises.

And we've all been in bullshit productions, and

we've all been on both sides.

We've all received someone that's telling us what we want to

hear, and we've all been the one telling someone what they want.

Reviews.

Performance reviews, ultimate bullshit productions.

You're only saying that what you want the person, what the person wants to

hear, because they're your line manager.

They're judging you on your performance.

Why would you say otherwise?

So how do you create a space where you can say otherwise, right?

Where you know, you just mean no judgment.

There's no opinion coming back on you.

And how do you create that psychological safety though?

I'm curious.

How do you create that safety?

This is it.

It takes time.

And this is why we go back to the philosophical decision.

Because this doesn't know.

This takes a long time to build, so if you use the data in rugby tells

you that you cannot reach a playoff a playoff match unless your team have an

accumulated 2, 000 minutes of playing together, and about 49 percent of them

have come internally through the system.

So 2, 000 minutes of playing together isn't enough.

You've played a thousand, I've played a thousand, therefore we've played

2, 000.

If you've played a thousand, I've played a thousand, and this is the first game

we're playing together, we've played zero.

So 2, 000 minutes is two seasons, it's two and a half seasons.

As a manager, you're coming in saying I'm going to build a team that's

going to come right in two years time.

Very few people are saying, yeah, crack on, Will, have at it.

Because we've got fans, we've got to please, we've got shareholders.

So again, that's why we come back to, you have to dig in and you have to build it.

One way of viewing a team, you can go and buy, you can buy a team, the best team.

The other one's not for sale.

You have to build it.

And this one, we know from all the research and all the data

is the one that's going to give you the long term sustainable.

But how willing are people to dig into that?

But that also resonates Matt and get your point of view, which is.

Some

of the lag metrics that we, see businesses, going against, which

would be regrettable attrition, but actually conversely to that would be

the balance of keeping tenure, right?

Moving tenure from, 11 months at a sales development representative to an 18

month process or an account executive and why you build career pathways.

I think it resonates that.

Example that the data is pointing towards, if you're going to get to a

playoff, you're going to have to do 2000 hours and then, for a business

to get towards, they're going to have to push that, that, that metric.

Matt, would you agree from your point of view of working with businesses?

think absolutely.

this conversation has got drawn out for me is two things.

One is

and we talked a bit about this in football in the football example earlier

around, yeah, around Chelsea and plenty of the same happens in business, right?

P fun comes in three years, turn around the business, off we go.

And what, from what you've just said there is that.

The reality is if you're starting from the ground floor or close to it

that's untenable That's not going to you're not going to be able to make

that kind of change in a business That you need in that space of time.

The other thing i'm thinking of as an alternative perspective for some of our

listeners out there who might be thinking about it is flipping this I think

about this from a client perspective.

I spent a long time in account management, account development, and you look at

those critical clients, you look at the relationships and the teams that

you may be working with in the way that you partner with your clients

and actually the importance of having.

And we talk a lot SBR around that, having client centricity and having all of

your internal teams working together.

But at the same time, it's about how you work together with your client base

and those real strong relationships, those clients that will give you a

little bit of leeway when something goes wrong, that was outside of your control

happens because of those relationships.

And I think often, so often we talk about it in the context of relationships, but

essentially, What we've debated here today is that really, it's an extension

of our own team into our client's team.

And it's a team that traverses two organizations that makes for a really

effective relationship, which means that both parties get the most out of it.

But if you think about any relationship in your life,

the best relationships you have more often than not are with

people you've known the longest.

I come in here, Matt, and I ask you to do something that means that you're gonna

stay at work longer tonight, it means you spend less time with your family, whatever

it is, you're gonna tell me to do one.

If someone you love that you know asks you to do the exact same thing

thing, you'll do it, and the only difference between the two of us is the

relationship you have with them, compared to the relationship you have with me.

again, when you bring that into client relations, into internal,

whatever it is, the premise applies.

It's the same principle of saying, actually, we say that the biggest

metric, and you can't really measure it, is that the biggest thing that

enables, and I do mean by that in terms of the high performance team, is

how many people within that group are prepared to show discretionary effort.

So how many people are willing to do more for less, or do more for nothing,

Yeah, we agree.

And that's it.

And the

but that, but you get

that a lot from great leadership and people leadership, right?

If I

and to your point about, I'm more likely to do something for my wife, my father,

not you Will, but probably more Matt, that is discretionary effort, isn't it?

It's going above and beyond to, to the point of view.

I'm just move into a topic that we're trying to crack at the moment, Will,

and we would like your thoughts on it from a people perspective and it's been

hugely popularized across the business at the moment, if you think about a

sales funnel, traditionally, what you've got is the classic marketing at the

top, delivering the demand generation.

And imagine this is one of your problem statements that you

shared with us at the start.

And then what happens is marketing then share that lead and that,

then the opportunity gets managed through the sales funnel, right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

It's two distinct groups, right?

Which again, it annoys me that we call it two distinct

groups, but it is in business.

What we're trying to deal with at the moment is supporting businesses.

Unify those two departments, those two groups, because at the moment, showing

you this image now for the listeners, it's fingers are pointing at each other.

It's marketing haven't produced enough leads for us to close and

therefore revenues not being here or the marketing leads are dreadful

or sales aren't closing the leads.

It's a lot of pointing fingers and limited cohesion to your,

to what you've shared earlier.

So.

That's your problem statement.

What would be three things you would do to support that business from the work

that you do at 100 & First or the time that you spend in rugby that would build

those two teams together to make sure they're more efficient and productive and

grow?

grow

So the first thing is you get them in a room and

you let them fight it out.

That's the first thing you do.

So nearly every one of our sessions starts with this kind of

what we call cards on the table.

So until we actually know what each other think, going back to what

we spoke earlier, then it doesn't matter what plan we put in place.

It's more than likely not going to work.

So we have to know, so marketing have to get out their view on the sales

team have to get out their view.

And what you'll find is the reality there'll be a massive amount

of a massive lack of clarity in what actually the two groups do.

And everything will be based off assumptions.

Everything.

So sales have assumptions as to why marketing aren't producing the right leads

or putting the right content out there.

Marketing will have massive assumptions as to why the sales team aren't closing.

The reality is once they're blown out the water, what you get is

this level of Oh, I didn't realize.

That was how you operated.

I didn't realize that was a challenge that you guys have to deal with.

Or I didn't realize that you have these time constraints on what you're

trying to put out, or whatever it is.

So what you get is this base level understanding and acceptance of this

is the reality of the situation.

Just, a quick extension before you go on to point two.

You remind me a bit like Wayne Barnes there, refereeing it but, just for the

listeners, if they were to do this in their own business, a lightweight version,

talk about the construction of it.

You have your two teams room, do you have a referee or a chairperson?

So what we, usually what we do is, again, we bring in so the

team cohesion talk would be one we, the Henry's would be really good for

this in terms of dealing with change.

There's obviously adversity and a challenge here.

So how do we deal with that?

So you have that contextual storytelling piece up front

that frames what we're doing.

So that immediately puts everyone on a level, right?

We're not going straight.

Yeah, especially if Henry was there, I'd be like, guys, look.

That's the nice kind of by product of doing that is actually

what you do is you put everyone, we've all heard the same thing.

Everyone's on a level to begin with.

Then what we do is, I don't know what we're talking numbers

wise, but essentially if you had a room of let's say 15.

You'd have, you'd split into small groups and each group would be a

cross section of the two teams.

So we're not going a sales table, marketing table, because then you

just, you carry on with what exists.

So you cross section it.

And then we frame the conversation.

So what we do is we say, okay, let's say the the framing questions everything's

hung off a framing question, right?

So the framing question for this would be something around how

do we improve our conversion?

From marketing to whatever, that's the thing.

So right, so that's the problem question.

What we do is have a conversation, okay?

We're in relation to this question, coaching operationally, what do we keep?

What do we change?

And what do we add?

So what do we do really well at the moment that allows us to do this?

What do we do really badly that we need to change to allow us?

And what don't we do that we did do would help

us.

The reason you ask that is a cross section because what you bring out

indirectly is their views on how we are coaching operationally as a team.

So what you'll get is, We ask keep first because if we ask keep last we never get

to it because the change in ad is just like can of worms and everyone's have

a bit of a bitch and a bit of a moan.

But there is good, there'll be good stuff there which is why you have to, but then

what we do is marketing and what I think we should change is actually the fact that

I don't think you guys do X, Y, and Z.

And the sales team go, you're joking?

how the hell do you expect us to be able to do that if you don't do X, Y, and Z?

So you just, you bring out these conversations indirectly.

So it's not okay to go and write, you tell these what you

think and you tell, because.

It's a bit more sensitive in that respect.

Yeah.

And so I use the fight it out analogy.

is probably It's probably a bit crude, right?

It's probably a bit, yeah.

You've done the rugby pitch,

it's just yeah, so no, it's just structuring

these conversations, right?

And that's what we use.

Yeah, so point two is so once you've got that and you've got the cards in

the table It's then actually really getting clarity in case of what

are the high ticket items there?

So from the conversation we just had, we've got the stuff we want to keep,

that's great, we need to know that because when you're trying to change or

add anything into a culture or a system, that can only happen if we have this

kind of golden thread of consistency that runs behind that, which is the

stuff we're already doing really well.

So from the change in the ad, it's understanding, okay, so

what are the big ticket items?

and getting agreement and clarity in that.

So our big thing is, when we work with teams, we say, if you disagree with

something and you don't say anything, you have no leg to stand on after

this session to bring it up at all.

Because we are agreeing verbally that it might mean that we never, we don't get to

the end of the session, but that's fine because it's more important that we're

on, we leave this all being clear on where we're going rather than just going through

this bullshit production and getting to the day, having achieved nothing.

So that would be point two.

So point one card's out, point two, Get some real tangible agreed, right?

These are things we want to go after, like forget.

And it just now is a focus because there'll be a million

things to choose from.

But what are the really top ticket?

What's the priority for us now?

So that would be points.

That would be the second point.

You.

Yeah, I asked you for three, so I'm

So when you did

this double check,

I'm rambling.

I forgot.

what this

No, you're good, that's why I'm just

So the third one is then actually, invariably these high ticket

items, they're exactly that, they're high ticket rights, it would be these big

sweeping statements or these big kind of, global, we want to be more collaborative

or breakdown silos and, these phrases are actually completely meaningless.

Because everyone talks about them and no one actually.

So what we do, okay, cool.

What does that look like tomorrow?

So what is that actually from an action and from behavioral point of view?

How do you leave work tomorrow being slightly more collaborative than

the uni world when you arrived?

So what is the tiniest action?

So again, how we draw that from a story, Henry's has got a great, he talks around,

his whole little big things, namely his shows, little big things, his books, and

the premise of that is, he got given an 18 month goal to get out of hospital.

So when he said that, okay, cool, what do I need to do to get a hostel?

I need to get in a wheelchair to get in a wheelchair.

I've got to get out my bed to get out of my bed.

I've got to be able to breathe on my own, to breathe on my own.

I've got to be off the ventilator to get off the ventilator.

I've got to be able to do breathing exercises.

So an 18 month goal was reduced into a five minute breathing

exercise every single day.

That was it.

So the framing is our high ticket items here, these are our 18 month

goals our 18 month hospital goals.

So what are your equivalent five minute breathing exercises every

day that get you closer to it?

And what always happens with these sorts of things is actually by

having that knowing the objective and the ambition, but having that

real clarity and what do I do today?

Almost every time we achieve the thing much quicker than we thought we're going

to achieve it because we're able to adapt, we're able to flex, we're able

to move because we're in the moment and we're looking at it and we're not,

if we're thinking too far up here.

All our decision making process is based on that.

So we take shortcuts and we make the wrong decisions and we do

things for the wrong reasons.

Whereas if it's in the moment, cool, I'm just doing this today.

And I know that if I do this, I'm moving the dial.

So

that's a tree.

That's

that's spot on.

And it's great to hear it from, one, one it's given me another perspective, Matt.

I know we're trying to crack this conundrum at SBR and we've got

propositions that we share with clients, but that narrative, the example, when

I love the fact that you bring in real life experiences to back up to

set the tone, basically, Depending on who you leverage, it's there for

a reason in your speaker toolkit.

But those three things brew well.

yeah, no, no worries.

Will it's been, you've shared so much with with Jonny and

I and and with the listeners today.

And we thank you for that.

A lot of our audiences, leaders or aspiring leaders out there in the market.

If you were to.

Give them one of advice from everything that you've shared today.

Clearly they'd love to go off give you a call and say, Hey can you, can

100 & First come in and help us do this?

If you want to just leave everyone with one thing to

think about, what would that be?

It's a shame because it was going to be hire us.

That was going to be it.

So I'm a bit gutted you've taken that one off the table.

Would just be, I think too often in life and this is a bit deep, so bear with me.

I think too often in life, like we, we, Life just goes on, right?

And we never stop and we never reflect on that.

And I think in business, and I have to check myself all the

time running my own business now and with a growing team actually

is what I'm doing, actually doing what I think it's doing.

And I think that's a big thing.

And then when we often, when we actually go back over it and reflect, it often

isn't because we get swept into this way of operating that is just, because

everyone else is doing it or because that's what a post on LinkedIn told

me to do or because of whatever it is.

And you don't know what you don't know until someone slaps you across the

face and says, you didn't know that.

And we don't, so we only operate in a world we know.

So I think be able to stop.

actually ask yourself those questions and then go out to your point,

Jonny, in terms of, I suppose you, you would term it as professional

development is go out and ask questions and try and learn some more stuff.

And, I think it's really important to, to challenge yourself and have

people, other people challenge you.

So Jonny, you challenged me, if we never get challenged and

stuff, people seem that's a good thing because I must be right.

It's a awful thing.

So if no one challenges you, your pool of knowledge is getting

smaller and smaller by the day.

Because you only know what you know, and you're not learning anything new.

So I think that's a big thing.

I think people, leaders in businesses say, if you can't hire us, but

yeah, we can have negotiations.

But if those that can't, then I think it's just the ability to

just go, just challenge yourself on what you're doing and reflect.

And if you come up chumps with it, then happy days, then you're onto something.

And if you're not, it's then, what can I do then?

How do I bust this myth and this assumption?

Brilliant.

I love that kind of challenging yourself.

And if you don't continue to learn, then you're going backwards.

And I think it's also for me, it's looking for those different opportunities.

And so often, what you've demonstrated today, Will, is that what's come from a

sporting context into a corporate world and how you've made that transition.

There are so many, Similarities that others out there can

take from other context.

Being a parent being working in side gigs or whatever it is that you're

doing, leveraging all of those opportunities is learning opportunities.

Thank you for that.

And thank you so much for your inspiration for your insight today.

It's been fantastic talking to you.

So really appreciate you.

You coming in and talking to us and

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

As always.

Thank you, Matt.

Cheers.

Will.

much appreciated.

Cheers, bud.

Thank you.

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