Mark and Margaret explore how leaders can operate effectively in unpredictable environments, emphasizing curiosity, reflection, and making decisions without perfect information. They discuss the limits of efficiency, the risks of relying too heavily on metrics, and how AI may weaken independent thinking. Margaret shares real examples of leaders who improved their organizations by listening more, empowering their teams, and building trust. They also examine extreme work cultures, the importance of maintaining personal autonomy, and how strong social connections in remote teams support better collaboration and problem-solving.

Chapters

00:00 - The World of Uncertainty

03:57 - Curiosity in Business

10:15 - Measurements, Data, and KPIs

12:51 - Letting AI think for Us

16:29 - Growing Leadership Skills

26:31 - CEO Coaching Experience

33:29 - 9-9-6 Mentality

38:00 - Business Trends

40:00 - Social Capital with Global Teams

45:40 - Margaret's Essential Question

About Margaret

Dr. Margaret Heffernan began her career producing BBC radio and television programmes, including dramas, documentaries, and the first broadcasts featuring Simon Schama. After moving to the United States, she led multimedia initiatives for Intuit, The Learning Company, and Standard & Poor’s, later serving as CEO of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone, and iCast. Recognized as one of Streaming Media’s “Top 25” and The Hollywood Reporter’s “Top 100 Media Executives,” she is also the author of seven influential books, including Willful Blindness, A Bigger Prize, and the best-selling Uncharted. Her TED talks have been viewed more than fifteen million times, and her next book, Embracing Uncertainty, will be published in 2025.

A Professor of Practice at the University of Bath, Heffernan mentors global CEOs through Merryck & Co., speaks at major international conferences, and chairs the board of DACS. She has advised high-profile public inquiries, was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2023, and is a frequent BBC Radio 4 broadcaster. She also writes for the Financial Times and serves as a parish councillor.

Where to find Margaret

• Website: https://mheffernan.com/

• X: https://x.com/M_Heffernan

• Ted: https://www.ted.com/speakers/margaret_heffernan

• Substack: https://heffernanm.substack.com/

All technology offers what I think of as a kind of use it or lose it choice. So, for example, I have outsourced to my phone the significant tedious burden of remembering all my children's phone numbers and the phone numbers of all my friends and colleagues. I'm very happy to do that. I have a backup on my laptop. I have a backup in the form of my husband. If worse comes to worse, he knows what my children's phone numbers are.

So that's something I'm willing to lose the knowledge I used to have because it's just much easier. I am not willing to lose my capacity to think for myself. I am not willing to lose the capacity to communicate.

Welcome to the CTO Compass podcast. I'm your host, Mark Wormgoor, tech strategist and executive coach. In every episode, we meet tech leaders from startup CTOs to enterprise CIOs to explore what it means to lead in tech today. They share their stories and their lessons so that you can navigate your own journey in tech. Let's dive into today's episode.

Hello everyone. Today's guest is Margaret Heffernan. She's an entrepreneur. She's an author of seven books, four-time TED speaker, very impressive, and a professor of practice at the University of Bath in the UK right now. She's built tech companies before. She's advising a lot of CTOs. She's written a lot about leadership, which we'll get into, uncertainty, very accurate right now in the world, and the human skills that we need when our predictions fail because of that uncertainty. Our latest book, Embracing Uncertainty, published earlier this year, borrows from the world of artists, showing how creativity, iteration, and trust help leaders navigate that uncertainty into those worlds. And that's what we get into.

So, Margaret, it's absolutely amazing having you here. Welcome.

Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Thank you. So let's start with your last book, because I think that's interesting. We live in, especially in the world of tech, in times of extreme uncertainty, developments are going so incredibly fast. And you said in your book that artists live productively with that uncertainty.

So as us and business leaders, tech leaders, what can we learn from that mindset?

The most important thing to learn is that the expectation that you can plan everything and indeed must plan everything. Before you start. Is certainly uncreative because you'll only be using past knowledge. You won't be factoring in anything you might discover along the way. But it's that there's a great deal to be discovered along the way if you weren't too obsessed with either sticking to your plan or being super efficient. I don't think there is no place for efficiency in the business world. Of course, there is. But efficiency only really delivers results and value. To the degree that it's dealing with projects, processes that are complicated. That means they're predictable. It means that there are aspects of them that repeat predictably. And this is not everything in business. There are lots of things that repeat, but they don't repeat predictably. And just because they repeat doesn't mean that there's a discernible pattern. And where you have that kind of system, which is really representative of greater complexity, If you're too efficient, you won't have any extra resources with which to respond. And we saw this a lot during the pandemic that everybody that had you know, tightened the braces on just in time. Discovered that they were not in time. They didn't have the resources to change, that they had nailed everything down so firmly that it became even harder for them to adapt.

And I understand, right? And I loved you gave some examples about a supermarket. You can plan everything in a supermarket, but not when somebody is actually going to throw over a stack of cans, for example, or when somebody is going to spill something in a supermarket. You can't plan even the simple things in a very simple environment, a supermarket.

So what are the skills that we do need and the skills that we should be working on in business life?

Well, so I think the things that are most important are, in fact, those things that we're born with, but certainly that a lot of educational systems deprive us of. I think it starts with curiosity. Being willing to go on a walk when you don't know where it's leading. Being curious about what you see along the way. Following that curiosity so that you're discovering new things, not just repeating old things. Having enough time and confidence To think about what have you seen? What does it mean? Time for reflection. Ask the capacity to ask yourself questions. Hannah Arendt described thinking as having a conversation with yourself. Do you have the confidence and do you have the quiet in which to have that? Conversation. It requires being able to make decisions before all the information is in. This is really tough often for people in business.

You know, there is a fantasy that, well, if I had all the information, then I would know what to do. Well, there are two problems with that. One is never have all the information. And secondly, if you wait until you think you do, you may well be very late. Or the stuff that you think is certain, can still change even when you've got all the information that's available. Right now at this minute. As we should know by now, Five minutes from now, that could change.

So you have to have the courage, the confidence. To stop before you know everything. And I think, you know, to me, the best example of this, because it really surprised me, With the number of novelists, especially novelists who write very complex novels, thrillers and plots and thoughts. They often start with a situation or a character or two. And that's all. They don't know what the plot of their book is going to be. They figure it out as they go along. That kind of tough-minded creativity I think is a really essential skill. In business today.

So, okay, you've got a bit of a plan. You're executing on the plan.

Something blows up in your face. You're not phased. You think, okay, reset. What can we do now that we couldn't have done before? This isn't just my goodness, my plan's destroyed. I've got to get back to the plan as fast as possible. Stop, look around and think, where are we now? And what does now offer that yesterday did not? I think it requires a lot of resilience so that when your plant is blown up, And instead of blaming people. Or hiding under the covers or bursting into tears. You just think, well, you know, this is life. And what can we do with it? Of all that thinking and wondering and curiosity, you know, what else do I have that I could apply to where we are now? Depends on very good, rich relationships with other people.

So that you're not dependent only on your own ideas. And I think it depends on a really healthy attitude to change. Seeing change is something that is liberating. That makes you deeper and more capable. Not something that is foisted upon you, that you want to do everything you can to.

Resist. And I mean, if I look at that efficiency, a predictable process is very comfortable. We know what to expect, or we think we know what to expect. We think we know what's going to happen. I understand that that's not really what happens, but as humans, we feel comfortable in a predictable environment. Uncertainty makes us uncomfortable every day. How do we deal with that? How do we break through that feeling and just are okay with feeling uncomfortable? How do artists do that?

Well, artists do it partly by recognizing that uncertainty is opportunity. If there's something that you're uncertain about or don't know about, that may be a fantastic vein to explore. I think there's a lot to be learned from scientists here. And I really reject the notion that artists and scientists are somehow polar opposites. They absolutely have huge amounts in common. But you know what scientists will say? Is that we were going to talk about the theory of gravity. We could talk about it. But we would do so understanding that it is the best knowledge we have so far. It doesn't mean it's all the knowledge that there could ever be.

So scientists will say that scientific knowledge is the best we understand so far. What excites them and what excites artists It's what lies beyond that. What else is there to learn? They don't for a moment assume, well, that's it. We've got it cracked.

You know, it's done. And so I think the capacity to understand that what certainty we have is, if you like, the beginning of a big adventure. Not the end of the story. Is a really important mindset to adopt. Bearing in mind that as the world changes, we will have to adapt. And having an optimistic mindset with which to approach that. Will be very much more creative, give you more options, give you more choices, and ultimately make you feel more like you're in charge of your life Then if all you do is look around and I'm on this Utah way. For certainty that you imagine somehow you can control.

Makes sense. And still business is all about, I mean, we work in larger teams. We have larger groups of people that are working together, embracing uncertainty together, maybe more comfortable, maybe not, but still we're working together. As companies to earn money to make a profit. And an efficient process, it's really easy. To measure what happens in the process and measure the outcomes. In uncertain worlds, how do we go about measurements, about data, about KPIs when we don't know what is going to happen tomorrow?

Well, I'd say two things. First of all, I'd say all of the obsession with measurement and KPI and performance management and all of that mumbo jumbo. It's really important to realize that while it's very effective at relieving the management's anxiety, which is, I think, its biggest benefit. What it will do is absolutely guarantee that nobody does anything extra. That if somebody has an idea that there might be a better way to do it, but it's not rewarded, well, just shut up and do it the stupid way. This happens in business all the time. I can go to any company and say, tell me stuff that doesn't work here very well, but you've been doing it like that for the last two years. And everybody has stories to tell. But, you know, they're hitting their targets. What's the problem? And if we stopped, it made it better.

Well, You know, that would take time. So let's keep doing stuff the stupid way. Instead of looking for ways in which we could improve what we're doing tremendously. And I think one of the things that's quite interesting about the rise of AI is even that many of the businesses I work with The CEOs are very excited by the idea of being able to fire thousands of people. But they're very nervous about what they're going to get instead.

Right? So they're very nervous when if they improve their system.

Well, maybe they won't be needed. But they don't actually understand the system well enough. To know really even off the top of their heads.

You know, where are the bits that are spectacularly inefficient. Or inadequate. Where should we start? That's a huge question that is bedeviling companies all over the world. And yet I promise you that people in those companies could tell you If they didn't think it would mean that they lost their jobs, right? Say, no, all this stuff doesn't work.

Well. If you listen to them.

So, AI is now here. I mean, we let AI think for us all the time. A lot of people do.

So how do you look at that part of AI?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, I don't think everybody is using it. I think a lot of people are using it very cautiously. I think many people, I'd include myself in this, are flabbergasted by how bad it could be.

You know, if I'm asking a question, it's usually because I don't know the answer, but when I know for sure that the answer I've been given cannot be true, you know, that's a little worrying. I do think there is a much more serious point, though, which you refer to, which is that all technology offers what I think is a kind of use it or lose it choice.

So, for example, I have outsourced to my phone. The significant tedious burden of remembering all my children's phone numbers and the phone numbers of all my friends in college. I'm very happy to do that. I have a backup on my laptop. I have a backup in the form of my husband.

So if worse comes to worse, she knows what my heart, shoulders, and throat numbers are. So that's something I'm willing to lose the knowledge I used to have. Because it's just much easier. I am not willing to lose my capacity to think for myself. I am not willing to lose the capacity to communicate. Or myself. And yet we can see that already young people, university students, are starting to do exactly that because they are doing their own whitings. They are becoming less and less good. At YTECH. When they get into a situation where they have to improvise, or where they have to think and speak for themselves. They will find themselves profoundly disabled. I think this kind of tool needs much more serious discussion.

Much more focused on critical thinking in our education system than already from the start.

Well, the World Economic Forum jobs report has been saying for the last two years, we need more creative thinking and more Chris Topping. There are educational systems in the wall that emphasize that. There are many that don't and that have ignored that advice steadily. And unfortunately, I live in a country which is one of those that we in the UK do not have an education system. That teaches young people to think for themselves. To argue the case. To be critical thinkers or to be creative thinkers. And I have argued for many years now that it's one source. Of the UK's great productivity problem. Which is we have people working who are intelligent, but their most productive capacity in terms of creative and critical thinking. Is woefully underdeveloped.

That is worrying. I'd like to move on to leadership, very different topic, but still something that I really want to ask because it's something that I deal with a lot and the people that I work with. You've written so much about leadership and I think this is a question that I have in general. It's not just you, there are so many people that have written about leadership. I sometimes coach young leaders. Where do they start? How do they go about growing their skills? Because there's so many books, there's so many podcasts, there's so many amazing examples. Why do people start to grow leadership skills?

I think that's a really good question. I think I was incredibly lucky. In the second job that I had after I graduated to have adjusted Absolutely brilliant. Manager. And tremendous colleagues. I didn't know it at the time. This is only the second manager I'd ever had. And we got along really well. And he did brilliant work. And I like to think that I did very good work. And it was only years later I realized everybody's not like this. I just thought, right, well, this is how you manage people, so it must be the way everybody does it. And, you know, then as I moved more into what I think of as door business, Especially when I moved to the United States and I was working alongside a lot more people who had been trained in business. I was kind of horrified to discover that not everybody didn't bleed like that. That there was this obsession with measurements. Which implicitly distrust people, right? "'It had never occurred to me.' that to get great work out of people, I needed to offer them cash incentives. And in fact, in all the five companies I run, I never have offered people cash incentives. And I've had absolutely no difficulty getting fantastic work out of very creative people.

So I would say, first of all, use your eyes to look around and where do you see the Really happy people doing really good work. In a relatively happy business. Find out what they're doing and how they're doing. I think, you know, if there are companies whose products you really like, And again, find out, you know, what's the ethos? What's the culture?

You know, how do people work? How creative are they?

You know, it's the most of the creativity in the finance and the deal making because often that is true. Is it in product development? That will help you understand where you really want to be. But look for the good stuff and really pay attention. To the things that demotivate you. Because if they demotivate you, it's quite likely they'll demotivate other people and try to understand what's behind it. Often it's fear. The boss is afraid that, you know, he or she is not. As powerful or impactful as they want to be.

Sometimes it's distraction. There's an awful lot of useless work going on and nobody's very focused.

Sometimes it's politics. Everybody's so worried about a deeply competitive culture and holding their spot. That they don't have time to think about the work that delivers real value. But when you see the good or the bad, really pay attention and think. Why is this working or not working? And if I were the boss, what would I want? What would motivate me?

So a lot of reflection.

Self-reflecting. Right.

Thing that I would say. Is And this is a little self-centered. I am much more I'm much more persuaded by management and leadership books. Written by people who have managed and bled. There is a vast library of books. Written by people who have never run so much as a lemonade stand. And I don't believe. There is such a thing as management theory. That has any value, you know? Physicists. There is such a thing as pure physics, right? There is a lot you can just do by thinking about it. I think business is not that kind of discipline. It's a pragmatic discipline.

So I tend to give much greater credibility to the researchers and writers to run something or who spend more of their time talking to people who run something. Than they spend reading research papers. It's just not to criticize my academic friends and colleagues. But until you're out there and you're watching it and you're hearing it and you're doing it, How do you know what's real? The experiments in the social sciences are hugely difficult to replicate. And I think that's partly because human beings are not consistent.

So that should tell you something. About the variability. Between different kinds of businesses.

You know, there is more than one way to lead. There is more than one way to manage.

So learn from everything you can see.

Learn from everything, self-reflect and figure out what works in your situation, with your team, your business, for your personality, the person that you are.

And ask people what they want. There's a book, fantastic book, published about 20 years ago. I can't remember the name of it. But, you know, its basic argument was, if you want to know how to read, ask people what they want and give it to them. It's like, well, yeah, why wouldn't you do that? But you have gigantic HR departments that don't do any of that, you know what I mean? They have lots of fury. And they weave it together in a way that makes a ton of sense.

And then they impose it on people without doing any trial. And then they wonder why people get annoyed.

Well, they get annoyed because they don't like being lab-wrapped. And they would like to feel that they want some influence. I don't know if I've watched. They do and how they work.

Yeah, understand what they want. That's a really good one.

Sounds so simple. I think very few leaders actually do that.

And then going from leadership, I think we're going a bit in the direction of culture, which you've written a lot about, team culture. And I think you've given a lot of examples of leadership that will already start to influence and build that culture.

Still, you've suggested that we build culture through small practices. How do we do that in larger organizations? I can understand how we do that as a leader with a small team, but let's say that I run a team of maybe 100 people or a business of 500 people. How do I still go as the leader of that business or organization to build the culture and actually make sure that it cascades down, that it's felt everywhere?

Well, I think there are a couple of things. I think, first of all, try to have a serious conversation with your team about the kind of culture you all believe in and want to work in. Fashion lady It's fine. What are the core characteristics of a culture that does this? What are the behaviors? That manifests that.

And then do that yourself. Because if you don't do it, Nobody's going to believe anything. I think you want to keep it as simple as possible. In the sense that, you know, I know lots of companies And I have, in a box on their values. And they have more values than anybody can remember.

And then they have more behavior if they want to see them. Actually, what this says to the workforce is, Would you please just be a robot? Right, we want you to have these components behaving in these ways. And this is profoundly demoralizing, and it's not surprising that people often complain, well, my people aren't very creative. They don't think for themselves. You've just told them not to think for themselves, right? You've told them we want you to behave like this, and so they do. Obedience is one of the biggest problems anybody in a leadership position has. Has to worry about. I would like to think as a CEO, if I told someone to do something mad, Stupid. If they would turn around and say, Margaret, are you sure that's what you want to do? Because I can see some problems here. The reality is Very few people. Will ever do that.

So be careful. How much values-driven bureaucracy and psycho training you dump on people Because actually, if you can get people to feel a sense of ownership in the work they do, a sense of pride in the work they do, You will get a lot more out of them. By giving them scope in which to do that work. Than telling them exactly how many times a minute you want them to breathe.

So scope and autonomy, basically give people the autonomy to make their own decisions and within boundaries, of course, and do their own work.

I feel much more accountable for the decisions I make. It was a decision that I had no role in.

Of course. Makes sense.

So, and I know that you coach a lot of people. You work with a lot of CEOs and businesses. Do you have some like real life examples of CEOs that have done this and have really turned themselves and with that their entire business around?

That's a great question. I can remember one particular individual. Super smart guy. Huge company. And I would say there were two issues that were I mean, he wasn't doing anything terrible, but there were two areas I thought, I think there's a lot more scope here. And the first was, that if I asked him to describe the people in his team, He could give me enormous detail about each one of them. And I was very impressed by this. He had really got to know people. He really thought about them. He understood, you know, when somebody was under stress, it was because actually they were going through a divorce. Or their partner was ill or whatever.

So he really knew people. But he had a strange belief, I've never quite figured out where it came from, that he should never communicate it. And at the same time, He often felt that there wasn't a lot of you know, kind of energy in the room. When he was there. And so I said, well, you don't even know your people really well. Do you have a say anything, you know, like the person who's going through a divorce Have you ever said anything about You know, I know you're under a lot of pressure. It's incredible what a great job you're doing. And he said, no, I wouldn't want to do that. They'd think I was being truant. I should be really thankful. They wouldn't actually feel quite motivated by the fact that you care about them. I'll have fun with that. Now, he was accumulating all this information to try to understand them, but he wasn't communicating the fact that he did understand them. You and he was doing it out of courtesy, which is nice. But I said, well, just try a little bit.

You know, don't have to sit down with this person. And talk about the divorce. But you can just Signify.

You know they're under a lot of pressure. And say, as a consequence, I really appreciate you. Watch y'all be doing it now.

Anyway, this was absolutely transformational. It is a big one. Because suddenly When his people saw that he thought of them as people, They started to think of him as a person. And so the whole quality of interaction between people changed radically. The second thing was about a different CEO I worked with who seem to believe, and I think this is quite a common belief, The job of the think-know is to know all the answers.

So we would all be at big meetings and they would discuss card problems. And they would end up concluding that what he wanted to do was the right thing to do. And this happened all the time. And he would talk about what we call this really hard decision. I think this is what we ought to be doing. And we've got a meeting next week. And I just hope that I can really land it with fatigue. Okay. And the next time I saw him, did you land it? Yes. Which is the problem. And what problem is, that you don't need the meeting. Because you've already made the Bible.

So I think what you should do next time, and it's just an experiment. I may be wrong. Just try it. He's calling me, King. Say what you want to be discussed. And Danny, don't talk. I can't find it. Give me that tool. Ciao. I was your input. And they won't say anything. They're expecting you to have the answer. Adjust. Promise. You won't say anything. I already did that. And he said at first it was very awkward because they were waiting for a pinch. What's the clue as to what the answer is? And he didn't say anything. And I said, so what happened? He said, They came up with really good ideas. And what did you do? He said, well, I thought some of them were better than my idea. Thank you for watching. Okay. How's it going? It went really well. It was a much better solution to the problem. Now, what is New Orleans? And well, actually, I've learned that I have really smart people. And I didn't have to go to all of these. Fantastic outcome, right? Finally, he gets home in time to have dinner with his kids. Not for a doubt. The people around him feel, wow, he does actually listen to us. And the decisions that are made collectively so everybody embraces them and feels accountable for them. But he had a deeply conventional and common view of readership, which is My job is to be the smartest person in the room. And if I'm not, They won't respect but actually to wish us suffocating all the talent around.

It. Incredible stories. And I think the second one I recognize from my own coaching as well, it's like we tend to forget that the people working for us are as smart or sometimes maybe even smarter than us and that that's perfectly fine that we should make use of that instead of having to overrule that. Love that.

I was really lucky because in the first company that I was I actually mulled. It was the case and everybody knew it was the case. I can't write a line of code.

So I couldn't be How long is the decision? I've had to trust My fantastic engineering team. And they knew I would never bluff because, you know, what's the point? But actually, Being able to frame the question. And being able to listen to the arguments and play it back to them. And to give them very hard problems, which you will know engineers love most. My contribution.

So being the fastest, you know, most accurate coder in the West, We didn't need that. We had a great people already.

So I know that we're on tech anyway. There's some worrying trends happening in tech. We talked about AI, I think, which is really going to upset everything, but something else that I've seen a lot Recently, and it's happening, it came from China, it's now happening in the US, and I'm seeing the discussions at least starting in Europe is this whole 996 mentality, working from nine to nine every day, 12 hours, six days a week, and that's the only way that we can make a startup successful or build a successful company. A discussion came by again this week somewhere. Where do you stand on that discussion.

Bye-bye. It's really funny you ask because I've just written a sub stack for next week, which is on this very topic. I have written a lot about productivity. I've done a lot of research into productivity. And what I can tell you is that it taps out at about 40 hours a week. And this has been true for 100 years. It isn't that you can't work 996. It's that your brain gets tired. And when your brain gets tired, you make mistakes. And now you need all those extra hours. To clean up the mess that you've made. We know that as you get more tired, you sleep less well, and as you have less sleep, and to be able to make. You're one of these solutions. Wow. Part of what happens is that the part of your brain that's responsible for keeping you awake siphons off energy in the form of glucose away from the parts of your brain responsible for problem solving and creative thinking.

So yes, you can stay awake and do stuff. What you call make good choices. You can't think first.

So it's much more likely that you're going to keep working, you're going to make decisions You're going to be bad decision. Then you're going to have to do something. Or you make a bad decision and not even notice it.

So I'm picking it. Two days, two months later... It's going to become really, I'm sick.

So. I think the core of this poem there is that Thinking is a physical activity. But we can't see it. I can see myself run. I can feel if I'm overdoing it. But I can't feel myself. Making too many decisions. I can't feel my brain. Re-engineering because it's in a panic mode. I don't think. Maybe, you know, those two months when I was doing 996. Maybe they have something to answer for. The other thing that's important here, I think, is that we know from neuroscience that Some of it.

Some of the decisions we have to make. Are cognitively very expensive. Which is to say that they need A lot of your brain. And a lot of time and energy. And of these, Ethical questions are some of the most extensive. Because they're so complex and because they're so ambiguous. And I am not the first person in the world to say that some of the but the ethical quality of decisions coming out of Silicon Valley. It's quite disturbing.

So the notion of a lot of really tired, fried, brain-scrambled, mostly young men making decisions that are going to have a profound impact. On how people live and work. Frightens take. And I think it frightens most of the world. And I think the bullying language and the pervasive propaganda about this will happen, you have no choice. You can either be run over or you can just get with the program and surrender your independence of thought. I think it's ugly. I think it's unethical. And I'm ashamed of the people and the companies that think this looks like strategy. It doesn't. It looks like propaganda because that's what it is.

Yeah. And I think, and especially in tech and the people that I see that work in the normal tech companies, not so big tech companies that we just talked about, they are indeed, they're it almost feels like they have no decision. Either be overrun or just get on board and train on AI. How can people make in that situation responsible or follow their own instincts and they'll do the right thing.

Yeah, well, I think I would say a couple of things. I don't teach at the University of Bath. I teach a program about how to negotiate these sorts of conflicts. It's not easy. I think it's impossible to do without training and practice. It's impossible to do without having the capacity for, creative and critical thinking. But it is possible to do. The second thing I would say And I would say this, you know, in any situation, not just tech. Always have your running away money. Always. I've been in several situations where I thought what I'm being asked to do is wrong. I'd gone in and said so. And basically I've won. Now, I think one reason I won is, you know, I'm prepared and I have a lot of experience to go see a gym. The other reason I want is that when people know you can walk away. A list and a lot more carefully. And it's really strange. I can't explain it, but it's not like I ever said, no, I have enough money to leave. People just feel it. I just know.

So, you know, I would give this advice to anybody at any age. Keep your overheads low. Have your running away money and you have freedom. And with the kind of skills that you have, you'll get a job somewhere else. But you don't have to be part of this. If it doesn't sit well with you.

Running away money. I love that suggestion. Another thing in tech that I deal with a lot is I think in your work, you talk a lot about social capital and how important social capital is in the teams that we have and the cohesion in the teams. And with that for the output of team, that it's not about having a team of stars, but it's building social capital in the team. In tech, we have a lot of remote teams, right? We have developers that are all over the world, not just the development team in India, but sometimes we have a developer in Africa, one in Romania, the next person in India, and the fourth person in Vietnam. How can we still... Make that work, build that social capital and a team that's so spread out from such different cultures as well.

Well, I think you have to put a lot more effort into getting people together to talk about things that aren't just immediate tactics. I know it's interesting in the life science industries, There are huge global research teams. And they do two things. One is they have learned from extensive mistakes. That they have to get their teams together physically at least once a year. It just, otherwise it locks It looks agile and cheap. But actually it's clunky and expensive. If they don't, because it's when people meet each other, they develop trust and openness and so on. But the other thing is I've seen a lot of international companies do things like Film clubs, book clubs, sports clubs.

You know, get togethers that are allowed time. Which is not if it doesn't look efficient, but it is just about hanging out together. And I saw this in the pandemic. It was sort of interesting, the number of companies that I was working with. Who would just have a kind of happy hour. When teams could pour themselves a drink and hang out together. The bosses work online. Right. That was just decompression time. I think this is really important. It feels awkward at first. It gets easier over time. Having something like a book or a movie or whatever to talk about so everybody's seen it or read it. Or heard the album or seen the show. It's really important to have that neutral space. On which to meet. And there's a fantastic research paper done by a very fine scientist named Furi Alam. And I worked at the Weizmann Institute on the sort of boundary between physics and biology. And he has phenomenally productive labs. And he's published lots of papers, which, you know, in that world is a sign of great achievement. But actually his most cited paper is one called How to Run a Motivated Research Team. And it comes down to something pretty simple, which is that he has a weekly lab meeting. There's almost all scientific labs.

So The first half hour, you're not allowed to talk about anything to do with science. They shouldn't talk about movies, books, kids, holidays, parties, whatever. But you can't talk about science. And what Alon says. Is that This feels really inefficient. But when people get really stuck, And when you're doing something bold and brave and innovative, you will get stuck. It's that keeps people going. It makes them comfortable asking for help. It makes them open when people say, you know, how are you? And they say, I'm really stuck. I don't know what to do. It makes people much more likely to share information Or just say, I know somebody who's had this problem. I'll put you in touch. And this capacity to share is the single most definitive characteristics. Of high achieving. Because if you think about it, an organization is like a network. And the faster information travels, the faster it gets for people who need it. And trust is really what is the energy behind that speed. Of transfer. If I'm not, you know, if I don't really trust you, I may not ask you for help. If you don't really know me, you may not realize that I need your help.

So you have all these little bundles of mission critical information on a side road somewhere. With everybody driving right past them.

So this stuff really matters. Okay. And it's again, you know, because we have such an obsession with efficiency. We tend to think, no, let's quack on. I think that's not. Let's find out where are we. What's going really well? What's really difficult? Where do you need help? And if that becomes a kind of routine way of dealing with each other, you'll find that information flows faster, everybody gets smarter faster, keeps up to date more easily, and you have fewer blockages.

And it's very useful for leaders to... Actually to spend a lot of time on and focus on and not just on the efficiency. I think there's a theme in this whole discussion, this whole episode. Final question then. If you could give every growing leader, like one question that they ask themselves, one thing that they reflect on every single week for themselves to grow and be better. What would the one Question B.

Try to repeat that again. I'm.

Sorry, if you could give every leader that's growing, that's learning to lead just one question that they should ask themselves every week. What should the one question be?

I would say, what is the one thing you've done to learn some whether it's practicing the piano or, you know, learning how to, I don't know, shoot a bow and arrow.

And keep focusing on that every week to learn more.

But it's very clear that if you learn one thing, it helps everything else. Don't just keep recycling. The stuff that got me there. Learn something and you know there's this fantastic emerging body of information that shows particularly with regard to the arts. That when you do anything in the arts, whether it's painting or singing or drawing, it doesn't matter how good it is. It makes you better at everything else. What?

I mean, it is a kind of, you know, secret weapon or magic potion, if you like. But we can see this in school systems. The school system to introduce more arts into the curriculum. Their students get better, not just at arts, But everything. And I've become really fascinated by the number of companies who, you know, on their board away day or their, you know, Exco away day or their team away day or whatever it is.

You know, starting to introduce more drama, more drawing, more music or something. Because it has huge relevance and Connection. With all kinds of work. But it seems somehow. To make people more capable of thinking discursively, which means they get better at home.

- Incredible. So arts, but basically learning, learn something new every day. Thank you so much for the interview. Any last words? Where can people find you?

So you can find all my stuff online. On my website, which is www.mheffernan.com, If you Google me, you'll find pages and pages of stuff. And on my website, you can subscribe to my sub stack.

Thank you so much, Margaret. It's been incredible having you on today.

Well, it's been a fun conversation, Mark. I always love it when I get to answer good questions.

Thank you.

As we wrap up another episode of the CTO Compass, thank you for taking the time to invest in you. The speed at which tech and AI develop is increasing, demanding a new era of leaders in tech. Leaders that can juggle team and culture, code and infra, cyber and compliance. All whilst working closely with board members and stakeholders. We're here to help you learn from others, set your own goals and navigate your own journey. And until next time. Keep learning. Keep pushing and never stop growing.