Episode 9: The People Strategy Behind the Growth

Tim Pointer:

[00:00:00 - 00:00:35]

Those moments are really quite intoxicating because you know you've made a visceral difference to the team. This is where you can make a difference and we are empowering you to find those stories and to come back joyfully to tell those stories. I don't believe in best practice. I believe in good practice because I think there is no such thing as copy and paste. Context is queen. We understand that not all of our horses are going to come home, but we have to create a culture beyond the board table where people have the opportunity to try some stuff out.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:00:38 - 00:00:45]

So I'm joined today by Tim Poynter from Three Hills Capital Partners and number one in the 2025 most influential list.

Tim Pointer:

[00:00:45 - 00:00:47]

Thank you for having me, Tim.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:00:47 - 00:00:55]

For listeners who may not know about Three Hills Capital, how would you describe the organization and maybe even a little on the investment philosophy that shapes your work?

Tim Pointer:

[00:00:56 - 00:01:35]

So Three Hills, we're a mid cap private equity firm so we work across Western Europe and North America. We were founded 11 years ago. We have about 3.2 billion under fund, fast improving on 35 businesses across the portfolio. And we exist to support founders and entrepreneurial executive teams to achieve their aspirational goals for their business. So as our founder Mara Moretti says, we're interested in the best supporting Oscar, not the best Oscar. We are here to enable their dreams, so we take minority positions to enable them to achieve their goals.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:01:35 - 00:01:40]

And tell us a bit about your background and journey that took you to private equity.

Tim Pointer:

[00:01:41 - 00:03:24]

Yes, I wouldn't say it's a straight line. Good. There have been a few ambles along the path. So I've worked in what was personnel, what became hr, what is now people and culture or human capital. We always think there's a little bit of a crisis of identity if you have to keep rebranding your product. But I've been in the profession for over 30 years and have worked in retail, FMCG, lifestyle and performance brands, tech, and most recently was the chief people officer of the brand management division of Creative Artists Agency. Through all of that, I've worked with fast growth. I was always, even when I started out at Marks and Spencer, I was always given the new openings to do the We've got this new proposition. How are we going to make that happen? I've never been your BAU person. I get excited about newness and difficult projects and how to get stuff done that hasn't quite been done before. So I love those exercising the little gray cells around business problems and working out the people side of those of those challenges. So when Three Hills approached me, it was that combination of international experience I'd lived and worked in across Asia Pacific, based in Sydney for five years. I'd worked across North America as well as European experience. And I had had a fair amount of time working for both founders and family businesses. So that combination of generalist, multi market and understanding stakeholders, how's it different working.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:03:24 - 00:03:28]

For a family owned business or an entrepreneur than some of the big corporates you've worked for?

Tim Pointer:

[00:03:29 - 00:03:38]

If you're in a family business, you've got to understand what the stakeholders are really looking for. It's a very different board table when the majority of people around it are related.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:03:39 - 00:03:40]

Yeah.

Tim Pointer:

[00:03:42 - 00:04:42]

You have to understand the underscore and the overture at the same time because there's a lot that's not being said and like any boardroom, there's a lot that's being discussed outside of the room. And the way that shows up in the conversation can be confusing until you understand the relationships and the different needs. When you in a family business, if you're looking for passing success from generation to generation, that's a very different timeline. If you're in a plc, if you're thinking about your quarterly reporting, that's a very specific timeline. If you're on a four year private equity backed scaling journey, that's a very different timeline. And each of those is going to drive different behaviors, focus on different metrics, different requirement for talent. And I love that. Having had the breadth of those different.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:04:42 - 00:04:50]

Experiences, how does private equity compare? I mean, do you not get a kind of a sense of fear of the guy from head office is coming?

Tim Pointer:

[00:04:51 - 00:05:03]

I spent the first five years of my working life and time before that as a teenager working in stores and, and I learned that the scariest words in the human language are hello, I'm from head office and I'm here to help.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:05:04 - 00:05:08]

Yeah, I'm from downtown and I'm on a mission of mercy.

Tim Pointer:

[00:05:10 - 00:06:17]

So I think it's anytime that you're working across a portfolio of businesses, you've got to demonstrate that you care and you've got to demonstrate that you have something to add to the conversation. You have real palpable experience and it might be from somewhere else in the portfolio that you're bringing across. And that's really relevant because it might be they've just had this challenge, they just had this success. It might be from something that you bring from your own history that you bring into the conversation. But lived experience is so much better than just turning up with a playbook of questions. The questions are important, but underpinning it with this happens, then that happens, or however you bring that expertise in a truthful but thoughtful way, I think leads to a strong and trusted relationship. It's not about control, it's about counsel. And that's a particular way of thinking about how you can guide and share information, insight.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:06:18 - 00:06:59]

You've recently been recognized as the most influential person in hr. How does that recognition land with you? And you are different and you'd speak differently than most CPOs. So just talk us through how that happened and what it, what it meant to you because you know, it's a very rare thing, it's kind of a controversial thing, it's a great piece of recognition. So just talk us through, I mean you've already talked about empathy, but just talk us through some of the feelings and emotions that, that, that's brought about.

Tim Pointer:

[00:07:02 - 00:07:26]

Well, firstly it's a peer nominated process across the readers of HR magazine and then it's overseen by Holt International Asridge Business School. So that methodology was, means a lot to me because it's about peer recognition. I think my first reaction was.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:07:28 - 00:07:29]

I.

Tim Pointer:

[00:07:29 - 00:07:48]

Wish my parents were around to tell them. And then what I said on the, the night when I received it was I'm not dead yet because I think there's got to be that sense of it feels like a lifetime recognition award. And I'm like, okay, I've got an awful lot of work.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:07:48 - 00:07:52]

One of those introductions that feels like an obituary still to do.

Tim Pointer:

[00:07:52 - 00:10:01]

Exactly. But what does it mean? I think it means that I really believe in the power of reciprocity and that the more that you can share, the more that you can create for the profession and for business, then it inspires other people. I don't believe in best practice, I believe in good practice because I think there is no such thing as copy and paste. Context is queen. But the more that we can demonstrate how people are dealing with difficult situations and different business challenges and how they're working them through, who they partner with, what their resources are, the methodology that they employ, the way they learn from failure and course correct along the way, I think those real case studies are really important and I think because of the, the different work that I've done along the way. So an example is 11 years ago now I created the Business Culture Awards and I just felt that this need to put together these examples of successful business practice across the UK and now it's expanded internationally and I felt that those case studies were not being captured anywhere else. And today we have hundreds of Case studies of different organizations, dealing with challenges in terms of deib, in terms of early careers, talent in terms of mergers and acquisitions, leadership challenges, etc. Etc. Etc. different scales of organization across different sectors. And I think because, you know, by working with a fantastic team, we have created that and it puts a lot of content out there into the community. And that's part of the history behind the recognition that, that, you know, business culture, connected community is incredibly strong and incredibly kind in terms of volunteering the work and time to one another.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:10:01 - 00:11:07]

Yeah, I just want to pull two things together there. So, you know, this idea of recognizing business culture and, you know, I'm glad that. I'm glad it's recognized that your awards mean something and, you know, they're not based on how many tables you buy, like many other awards, but also this idea of failure and perhaps how your international experience and experience, particularly with growth companies, it gives this idea of like, you know, we can fail, but we've got fail fast. And how that kind of might be more useful to leaders in today and tomorrow's environment where workforces are more polarized, there's more asymmetry in the workforce, there's all sorts of uncertainty around everything. And this idea of what would make someone a perfect leader 10 years ago just feels like nonsense. So how do you coach and help your leadership cadres in the businesses that you've been in develop, you know, against this idea of being driven by fear of failure and towards perhaps something a bit more progressive?

Tim Pointer:

[00:11:07 - 00:12:17]

I think that's such an interesting question, particularly when it comes to talent, because do we look for leaders who have always succeeded when they're going to very complex situations, or do we look for those that have had challenges along the way and have failed? And my word, if I look back across my own career, I've had some spectacular failures. And hopefully learning from mistakes makes you better. Next time you ask different questions. It's the nature of experience. You show up in a different way and you are able to be curious because you've seen what can go wrong. And I think that's so critical. And I'd much prefer to have an honest conversation with a senior leader who talks about where she's failed and what she learned from those failures than from someone who just gives me the gloss and tells me this edited story of their career of, like, success after success, because, frankly, I'm not speaking to the real person then, am I?

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:12:17 - 00:12:28]

But we've got into a position, particularly with senior leadership, where it is that perfect, glossy perception of someone's career that they project.

Tim Pointer:

[00:12:29 - 00:12:32]

Well, famously there's lies, damned lies on LinkedIn.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:12:32 - 00:13:17]

Well, I mean I can't. If I had a pan for every time I'd had to text someone said what you put on LinkedIn isn't actually what you did in that assignment, I would be able to pay at least half the term school fees. But for leaders, again it's a challenge, right? Because you know, in where people are looking for this idea of perception or this perception of perfection when we don't operate in a working environment where that's even possible anymore. So in the firms in your portfolio, how do you kind of assess not just for what they need and, and culture fit, but culture add and critically and something that we're doing external research on with, with some partners, you know, the things that will drive growth because of course growth is gold.

Tim Pointer:

[00:13:18 - 00:16:57]

I think to answer that, let me share the way I think about the growth journey and the part that people strategy plays within that and the way that I deploy that across the, the three hills portfolio. So obviously for an investment to go ahead, there's an investment thesis which gets developed by the current executive team, led by the founder of the business in which we're investing, gets reviewed by the investment committee and then against that an investment is decided. And the way I think about it is that if that is true in, let's say five years time, if you start from the end and you understand what that's going to mean in terms of markets, products, services, experience, geography, and you then parlay that into organizational design, not the detail, but what broad strokes would need to be true for that scale of business to successfully be building. Because obviously it's on end point in five years. It's about making sure it's got the, the legs for the, the next part of its journey, wherever that, wherever that's going to be. And that's a very rich conversation and you can break that down into the component functions across the business. So let's pick one of them. Let's say, let's look at the commercial function and you're scaling a business, what will that commercial function need to be in 5 years time in terms of business development? Key account management, what external networks will that team need to hold, experiences will they need to be able to bring, what relationships will they have deeply held? Because it will be that next scale of business. You will then be competing for work against a different competitive landscape, different sizes of clients going into a pitch process against people that you're not pitching against today. So how will you need to show up? What market intel will you need to have? How will you be ensuring that you're retaining your clients and you're selling more products and services to them at the same time as acquiring new ones? And who's going to own those processes? How will you ensure, because I'm going to assume that you'll have M and A along the way alongside your organic growth, that you're going to have the ability to cross sell across the full suite of products and services that you now have, which are different to the ones that are amplified from the ones that you have today. What will be your ability to upsell in that new world? What will be the commercial acumen that that team will hold? How will you build the level of business understanding so that they understand the detail of all those products and services? And how will you have the right level of negotiation skills to win at that more elevated level? So when you have that conversation, you then start to say, okay, well, this is what we'll need in terms of, do you have a chief revenue officer today? Perhaps not. Okay, at what point in the journey would that person come on board? Let's have an honest conversation about how long it would take to identify that person. Caught that person, them to see out the notice period, them to fallow, period. You know, you start to block all of that back and understand the pegs that will get you.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:16:58 - 00:17:24]

Two questions for the viewers. What does a Chief Revenue officer be generally made accountable for? Is my first question. And the second question is, how often do you get into the early stages of an investment and more than 50% of the skills that you require for the end of the investment or when you might want to exit or refinance, how often is 50% of what you need already there?

Tim Pointer:

[00:17:25 - 00:17:51]

There's two parts to the answer. First, the clarity of the process that I've just described in terms of what you're going to need? Secondly, a very honest assessment of what you have. And because that founder, that executive team have worked with their colleagues for, let's say, 10, 15 years up until today, they're kind of family in some cases. They are family.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:17:53 - 00:17:54]

I empathize. Yeah.

Tim Pointer:

[00:17:55 - 00:19:21]

So you're having to point out that, you know, Sally's fantastic and Ammar's great, but in terms of the team that you're going to need, how far can we invest in their capability? So I break things down. I'm not the only person that uses this language. But in terms of building capability, how much are you going to be able to invest? Because you take them out of the business operation today, you're going to miss them. So to what extent are you going to balance their strategic development and strategic input alongside their operational delivery? And that's a choice, but you have to lean into that fairly heavily. And at the same time, what are you going to. So you've got to build capability, but at the same time you've got to buy in capability and to have those things alongside. Now, not everything needs to be developed or bought in. There are some components where you can say, we're going to borrow those from a different organization and understand the relationships you need to have. They need to have everything in house and then of course, what are you going to bot? So it is that breakdown between build, buy, borrow and bottom. And all of those are talent solutions and fundamentally business solutions.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:19:21 - 00:19:39]

Yeah, I mean, it's so fascinating, particularly when you've got a team that is good enough to get the investment to then kind of have to get them to look at that journey in a degree or a dimension that they couldn't possibly have got before they had the investment.

Tim Pointer:

[00:19:40 - 00:22:43]

In terms of sustainable, profitable revenue growth and in terms of bringing experience to bear, I've had many a conversation in terms of I can see the revenue, but I want to have that breakdown of the level to which that is profitable. And I also want to understand that we're attracting the right clients who are going to be with us as we scale forward and that they're having the right experience. And I can see the net promoter score coming through from them because never, ever underestimate the amount to which people talk. And when people are asking for referral from one of your current clients, you want it to be incredibly strong and resonant. And yeah, not only are we doing great, great business with them, we're also increasing the amount of work we're giving to them for these, for these reasons. And then just that point in terms of understanding that not everybody is going to complete the journey and the role that they're in today, it doesn't mean they're necessarily going to exit. It just means you've got to put in some cases a different set of experiences and capabilities around them. Because you're scaling, if you're going to go from 150 to 500 people over five years, not every leader today needs to be around the executive table at the end of that journey. It's okay if they are still looking after the same, actually a larger amount of business and number of clients, they just don't. They just may not be leading the whole thing. And I suppose one of the obvious pinch points on this is often the cfo. The experience of the CFO in terms of dealing with all of those stakeholders, thinking of the journey on the way through in terms of, you know, the broader professional network, what's their relationship going to be with the bank, what's the relationship going to be the auditors, what's the relationship going to be with the, the PE house and that broader network? There are so many components as you scale where you just. The network becomes so critical and particularly when you're getting into those conversations on exit, when you're really driving the conversations around the multiple that the core people that you're going to have around the table, let's say it's CEO, chair, CFO as a starting trio, you really have to think about the way that they are set up for that. If they do not have that lived experience themselves. The responsibility sits with us to make sure that they're prepared in the right way and we can absolutely do that. Several examples of how we've identified the right person within the, the business and they haven't had the experience of a particular thing before. How are we going to lean in and build them up so that they have that capability and they're going to be confident and we go through that arm in arm. It's not about, you know, yeah, you.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:22:43 - 00:23:51]

Can'T replace everybody but no, but some people do have to be augmented or replaced. And another piece of research that we've put out that we're not expecting back for six months is around what organizations can do to reduce time to productivity. So when you're on a growth journey, when you've got hopefully a supportive and benign private equity firm, but not everybody has got the same reputation as Three Hills. You know, you're on a clock. So when you bring somebody in a, there's an opportunity cost around relationships potentially. But also this time to productivity is a massive thing. So when you've had a tight knit team, you know, you need to bring in some additional experience and capability. You've got this double whammy because that tight knit team may never have had that before. It's a new person, it's to some people maybe a threat. So how do you help the chief executive create the conditions where that time to productivity is manageable?

Tim Pointer:

[00:23:52 - 00:25:12]

I think the first thing which you just touched on is it's a team sport. So understanding the, the strengths of the team as, as it exists today and understanding what the needs are in terms of augmentation are Critical because it really changes the brief of the role and we use psych. So we will do an assessment of the team as it sounds today, both in terms of their individual preferences and their operational experience. So we're super clear as to what they're all bringing to the table and then that can really identify where there is a different role to be, to be played. It can often really shape, for example, the role of the chair and what you're looking for the chair to bring in terms of her network, in terms of her operational experience and understanding how that fits within the broader responsibilities. So clearly there are some chairs that have a lot of different roles simultaneously. That's not going to work for us. It will rarely be the only one that they hold. But we need someone that can give quite a lot and is going to be available because this is a team that needs mentoring.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:25:12 - 00:25:12]

Yeah.

Tim Pointer:

[00:25:12 - 00:25:25]

That needs time and that's going to need a lot of insight and good counsel to. To get them there. So we're looking for, obviously we put the right package together, but also we're looking for the right eq.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:25:26 - 00:25:41]

Do you find it more of your time and. And the time of your. The people in your network who you trust, who have a passion for the people agenda, is spent working against more negative external narratives.

Tim Pointer:

[00:25:41 - 00:26:32]

Now, I think you've got to be aware of them. But at the same time, I go back to my comment, you can tie yourself up in knots of reasons not to do things, or you can say, do you know what? I have to believe that this is the right thing to do. So last year, in terms of my volunteering time, I was working with a charity that, that works in prison and we were working with prisoners that were coming to the end of their sentence and how they were going to come out into the working world and interview preparation and all of those pieces. And you know, again, I've never been inside a prison before and to go and have those conversations, you can keep that bit in as part of my character referencing is true. I had never been inside a prison before, despite what many people.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:26:35 - 00:26:37]

Chatgpt isn't right on everything.

Tim Pointer:

[00:26:39 - 00:31:15]

Exactly. And you have those conversations, you carry them away and you think about, is there anything I want to do with what I've learned today? And they were such interesting conversations and I always think about what that individual is then going to do. And they were going back to their cells and a number of the guys that I'd spoken to were really interested in me talking about the world of work and pieces and they were like, what do you read? And I suddenly realized that the prison library was incredibly important to them and that the access to books in terms of the amount of time that they had to read and improve their literacy, but also to improve their understanding of the world of work, because they hadn't had the privilege of working up until that, you know, been working perhaps in other ways and sometimes creating some great transferable skills in terms of commerciality that we could, you know, that we could definitely work with. And so I bought this little compendium of business books which I found useful over the years, and then sent them to the prison library because it's. Why wouldn't you? You know, it's like we can all make a difference if we choose to. Now somebody else won't like that story because it doesn't fit with their view of the world and crime and punishment and everything else. I respect that. But I hope that they also respect the choice that I make in that situation. And going back to the example that you very kindly shared, this was because in a previous business, at the end of a successful year, our CEO had said to us, I really want to, to mark the success, and I've never known anyone do this before, mark the success of the year. I'm going to give you all an amount of money, but that is for you to donate to the charity of your choice. And I told you that story and, you know, isn't it fantastic where we can find these original ideas and examples and share them? It goes back to what I was saying before about the, you know, the power of telling stories, the power of sharing good practice and how that can then inspire or interest somebody else and they take it forward in their own way. And so we can do those in lots of small examples. As a firm, Three Hills is a B corp. We have a very strong focus on ESG going right the way through the investment choices that we make, guides the decisions that we make, guides the investor relationships that we have. And then we have two funds, our main fund and then a impact fund which solely focuses on people, planet and progress. And examples of investments in that in the impact fund would be in education or in electrification of our road network. So there's a insulation business, there's a large number of EV charging installation, for example. So that gets really interesting where you can have it here and here. I think that just lights up the conversation you can have through an organization, obviously working across a portfolio of businesses. I have conversations like this as to, okay, how can you show up, but in a way that's Right for you. And I always think that anytime that you have these conversations and you try and put them in a corner of the business and say, well you know, that's for you to focus on. So for example, if you're having a, if you want to actually make a difference in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, then is that going to be put over here and the, you know, the chief people officer is going to be given that as a focus and that means that no one else has to think about it or are you actually going to say so what's the purpose of our organization and how are we going to show up? So I worked in consumer for a large part of my working life. If you really want to make a difference, go and have that conversation with your procurement director and think about the network of businesses that you are choosing to empower and what your selection process is for those because that is going to impact tens of thousands of people and in the sort of scale of lifestyle and performance brands that I've worked with over, over the years. If you're saying these are, this is where you can make a difference and we are empowering you to find those stories and to come back joyfully to tell those stories.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:31:16 - 00:32:44]

There's a lot of chat about supplier diversity. For a short period of time I was a dreadful chair for a group of about 500 ethnic minority owned businesses MSD UK. They did, they put me in for the kind of client side. It's a bit like herding cats but really powerful, hungry cats. And, and it's so difficult, you can't say to, you know, someone who has a printing business in Solihull, they're not probably the right partner for Goldman Sachs globally because who are you to tell them how to run their business? So that supply diversity thing is ever so difficult. I think some corporates have tried to do it but as far as I know no one has actually ever had a ring fence spend for it outside the States. And the States and its views on this is having quite a pervasive effect on some of the thinking of, of leaders in the uk. And I'm interested in bold ideas, you know, ideas that cut through rather like this kind of lovely example of the person who said here's some money, go and give it to charity as a thank you for what you've done for me and something which you know, we've unashamedly copied because of, because of your, you're telling that story and I hope other people go and tell that story and you know, in some small Way we get to pay that forward. When was the last time you did something at work and you kind of thought to yourself, yeah, that's why I do the work.

Tim Pointer:

[00:32:45 - 00:33:36]

Earlier we talked about that organizational design piece of starting from the end and working back. And there's a workshop that I run with the executive teams very shortly after investment within a hundred day plan. So obviously you take, you go through the whole due diligence phase and then you transfer that across into your 100 day plan work. And as part of that, we go in and we go, right, okay, this is what your ambition for the business would require. And we go through that process of blocking it back. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And at the end of the session, I honestly felt that I was very politely being frog marched out the building because it was, that sense of, that was brilliant.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:33:37 - 00:33:38]

Too much, too soon.

Tim Pointer:

[00:33:38 - 00:34:08]

If you say one more thing, we are going to explode. Because there was so much going on at the same time and there were incredibly gracious. But it was that absolutely that case of we are going to take that, we have put that up on the wall, we are going to work on that and you're going to come back and that's going to be in three months. And it was just that, give us the space. But it was that lovely piece of, you've got to get the strategic flywheels going at the same time as the operational growth is happening.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:34:08 - 00:34:08]

Yeah.

Tim Pointer:

[00:34:10 - 00:34:24]

And you've got to put enough in there that gets that kind of visceral reaction of, you're absolutely right. And a little bit of fear and a little bit of emotional reaction, but you're not going to be there every day working it through.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:34:24 - 00:34:26]

The wheels can't come off. They still have to move forward.

Tim Pointer:

[00:34:26 - 00:35:32]

Exactly. So it was an, it was the idea and the engagement and the accountability and then respectfully get out of the way because they've got other stuff to do. And I think for any firm like ours, that is all about how you enable that really fast growth. You've got to, you know, the quarter's numbers have to be hit, but also the strategic plan has to be met simultaneously. So you're trying to work it, work out that balance in terms of leaning in far enough and then getting out of the way. Leaning in far enough and getting out of the way and identifying anything that needs unblocking or where someone's overloaded, any challenges that you can see. But yeah, those, those moments are really quite intoxicating because, you know, you've made a visceral difference to the team. And they, you know, there's a difference between respect and love. They're not going to love you in that moment, but they respect you for sort of going, yeah, that is the work you've got to do simultaneously to delivering this month's targets.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:35:32 - 00:35:41]

But a lot of growth comes from hearing things that you can't unhear, apart from I'm in HR because I love people. Tell us something.

Tim Pointer:

[00:35:41 - 00:35:42]

I've never said those words.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:35:42 - 00:35:48]

No, please don't say them now. Tell us something. That is a. People get completely wrong about hr.

Tim Pointer:

[00:35:49 - 00:36:21]

That I'm in HR because I love people. I mean, you know, deadly seriously for me, I've always been fascinated by how you build organizations, how you can build a business, but how you build a high performing team. A number of years ago a previous CEO said to me, well, of course you'd understand that, you've got an mba. I went, my master's is actually in contemporary theater practice. At which point I got that look.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:36:21 - 00:36:24]

Of one master's is as good as another nowadays.

Tim Pointer:

[00:36:24 - 00:37:56]

Exactly. At which point I got that look of if I'd known that I might not have heard you. But you know, from that time of you put teams together to deliver anything. You learn so much about the capabilities that you need within a team. And I say that because I learned as much in terms of putting together teams to put on a successful theater production as I did of, of opening marks and Spencer's second lonely 11,000 square foot food only store in Wokingham. You know, it's the same thing. How do you put something new together and how do you understand the components across that team that need to show up? Because the great, anybody that enjoys producing that, overseeing, understanding all the cash flows for it, the marketing of it, the sales process, the, the, the backstage skills, the way that everything will come together, then that gets really interesting. So I don't think, I honestly don't think it's about a love of people. I think it's a being really interested in, in the way that you put the human components together to create high performing organizations. And I go back to it's a team sport. And one of the things that I really push hard against is the idea of, well, if we go and we find this one amazing individual, then that's going to fix all our problems. No, it won't.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:37:57 - 00:37:57]

It never does.

Tim Pointer:

[00:37:57 - 00:39:07]

Never does. And you've got to understand the nature of the team and the evolution of the team. And that's really interesting. The piece that I also think is a misunderstanding about HR is that in Any way it should be disconnected from the metrics of the business? Absolutely. I started out in store with Marks and Spencer. One of the very first numbers that I learned was takings per head and the ability to consistently flex the cost of your people against the amount that's going into the till every single day. And I mean every single day. You know, if it was a rainy Wednesday, I would be asking to see if anybody would like to go home early, because that's business. Right. You are constantly looking your profitability. And if you have that in your heart from the start, you understand that balance between the people and the performance of the business and how you bring those two together in a meaningful way all the way through.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:39:07 - 00:39:20]

But that wouldn't be the leadership capability, or perhaps it would. What do you think the leadership capability that will help organizations the most in the next five years?

Tim Pointer:

[00:39:20 - 00:40:14]

So for me, it's about having that clarity as to what success is for your business in this market, but the ability to constantly check that that market's still there. Because the speed. You said five years. It's quite rare that someone says five years these days. In terms of a timeline, if you're not looking at the term of a PE investment, because quite often business plans, I can remember when they used to be five years and then they became three years. And now I quite often hear two years and sometimes 18 months, because it's this sense of I can't see around that corner. And we've had so many seismic shocks to our society, our economy, and the way we think about the world that I just think that that horizon keeps coming in closer.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:40:14 - 00:40:34]

Yeah, it's a really nice point. How do you think that decreasing horizon affects the kind of leaders that organizations need? And specifically, although I was taught never to ask a question in two parts, what you see in leaders that you think other people might miss?

Tim Pointer:

[00:40:35 - 00:42:29]

I think the danger in the situation that we're just talking about is conservatism, that you look at all of this and you go, I'm not going to make that investment. I'm not going to deploy that capital. I'm not going to invest in that person. I'm not going to invest in that, in that new piece of equipment. And that is where we will see revenue and productivity not going in the way that we want it to. There has to be some boldness there. And we understand that not all of our horses are going to come home. But we have to create a culture beyond the board table where people have the opportunity to try some stuff out and to Come back and talk about the, you know, the experiments that they're trying, trying across the business. Let's take an obvious example. You know, what does AI mean to your business? Are you allowing your team to run it open source on their phones and that they're all just using it? You're pretending that that isn't happening or are you finding a way to bring that into the organization so that your data isn't going out into the ether, but you're enabling a safe space in which people can learn new skills, try some stuff out and share the stories of, oh, I've just worked out how to do this because that's happening. Whether you think you know that's happening, every business leader knows that's happening. So what are you doing to create an environment in which you actually bringing those examples up and people can learn from one another? Or are you creating a culture of fear or ignorance in which people are doing it quietly and they're not sharing?

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:42:29 - 00:42:41]

We encourage it, we just say you should be open about when you're using it. And then if there's numbers in there, you should damn well check those numbers because you can't take, you can't take risks with things like that.

Tim Pointer:

[00:42:41 - 00:43:49]

So yeah, so that's just one example of where you have to have a curiosity. You have to accept the world as it is. You have to understand human beings are human beings and meet people where they are and find a way to bring those stories out. So, you know, because if people are finding better ways to prepare market reports to bring in, to bring in insights, to identify opportunities in terms of new clients, new markets, they're seeing a way that they can amend their current provision of, you know, product services, experiences. How exciting is that? So you've got to have that, the ability to then respond to those opportunities. Because we have a generation of talent now that's been brought up watching Dragon's Den or Shark Tank. If I go back to my time in the school last week and you know, Talking to those 15 and 17 year olds, they refer to Shark Tank, which I thought was really interesting seeing their operates.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:43:50 - 00:44:10]

I mean it's a way. But the American Shark Tank is a way better program and the deals are much more realistic. I mean, people get loaned money, people get percentage of profits, people get impetuity. You know, it's not just here's 150 grand, you're probably not going to accept the shareholder constraints in three months when I bring you the paper. It's, it's much more dynamic.

Tim Pointer:

[00:44:11 - 00:45:13]

So my point is that with that talent. So we have prepared. And so, you know, you see this in secondary schools, you see this in business schools where previously the aspiration of those who are going through MBAs are I want to go and work for these enormous blue chip companies. You talk to those professors today and the majority of people in the room are saying, I'm going to go and start up my business and it's going to do this, it's going to do that. So aspiration has changed. So if you're not creating a commercial action oriented environment in which people can try stuff out and feel that they have some entrepreneurial flair, where's the talent going to go? And the answer is self serving. If you do not do this, those with get up and go will have got up and gone. You have to create an environment in which you really, really lean into that spirit and opportunity, but you have to.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:45:13 - 00:47:19]

Create the opportunity for entrepreneurship. And I think one of the challenges we've got outside productivity in this country is the entrepreneurship that people may wish to demonstrate doesn't necessarily fit what people will invest in. And with the current economic climate and all the risk and all the doom mongering, many of those people who are talking about entrepreneurship when they're 16, by the time they're 24, they're thinking, is there somewhere I can tuck in and be a 7 out of 10 forever? And that's changing quite dramatically. And we really do need to think differently about the story and, and the experiences people get at the beginning of their careers because we tracked the FTSE, the top 10,000 jobs in the FTSE 100 since 2014 in our leadership series. And for years and years and years we could see certain trends around women and ethnic minorities by level, by function. And the most, the most damning one was we were a net exporter of black talent. And in the FTSE 100, at the kind of top 120 roles in each company, only about 10% of the black talent, which say averages out around 8%, 0.8% of that in total was British passport holders. So we were exporting black British talent and we were importing Afro American talent or talent from other places in the world. So when we looked at that, we thought, oh, this is a really good, you know, this is an entrepreneurial story, people going to Fintechs. But when you go into the detail, it's not, it's people going abroad where they think they're going to get a different, a different opportunity. And, and that for me is the biggest thing that any Business Secretary can do is install a bit of confidence in our talent, that this is a place where this is still a country that has fantastic opportunities for people, but they have to believe it.

Tim Pointer:

[00:47:20 - 00:47:37]

Absolutely. And this goes back to one of the most important traits in terms of leadership of any organization, be it a country or a business, the ability to have a really clear narrative, to be a fantastic storyteller and to inspire.

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:47:38 - 00:47:50]

What's the question? Finally, Tim, and thank you for being so generous with your time and your knowledge. It's been a pleasure. My final question for you is what's the question you wished more people had asked you?

Tim Pointer:

[00:47:53 - 00:51:06]

So the question I wish people would ask me is tell me more about your podcast. So while I think of the true answer to your excellent question, over the over recent months I've built out a new podcast series called Powered by People, Three Hills Business Podcast in which I got to ask the questions and do what you have done so wonderfully. And I brought together different people leaders from different organizations to talk about how they have led people centric transformation and those stories. So we've had Kerry Gott, who is the chief growth and people officer from hawksmoor, growing from 10 million to 100 million. Great British success story, just linking back to what we were just talking about and expanding from the UK into the, into the us. Tiger d' Souza MBE talking about the transformation that he's led both at National Trust and at Samaritans. The most recent episode is James Hartley talking about the work that he's led at Swiss Re. And then we have different projects across Leeds Building Society and Nottingham Building Society. And the reason that I wanted to bring these stories together is that it goes back to values fundamentally. If you believe that it is a team sport and that people buy people, that you have to put that people journey, that strength of exceptional teams at the heart of any business transformation. And everybody listening, watching this is evolving their business in lots of small and in many cases larger ways because if they stand still, they're not going to exist. We both know that. I think at the heart of those conversations and perhaps this answers your question. It's about that curiosity that if you're still in the same profession as 30 years ago, why, you know, we're all hopefully living longer. And if I go back to those 15 and 17 year olds, the majority of them will live to be over 100. They have very, I hope, long and happy lives and fulfilled lives because they will have different, different career opportunities and they will probably do two, three, four different things across their working lives. How interesting is that going to be? And at the heart of that is going to be that curiosity. So perhaps, perhaps that's the answer to the question that. The question that needs to be asked is how do you fulfill that curiosity? How do you keep leaning into different, different parts of the world, different cultures, different sectors, different relationships and networks, and constantly finding joy and interest in them?

Raj Tulsiani:

[00:51:08 - 00:51:16]

I can see why you're number one on the most influential list. Tim, it's been a pleasure having you at Green park today. Thank you very much.

Tim Pointer:

[00:51:16 - 00:51:17]

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.