You're about to listen to My Favorite Tip episode, where I select one of my favorite tips that I've heard on this show. But I want to know what your favorite tip has been that you've heard on How I Work, because I'm putting together a short series of listeners favorite tips that I'll be releasing next month. To submit a tip, email me a voice memo or a note to Amantha at Inventium dot com dot Au. That's Amantha at Inventium dot com dot Au and you can get my email
from the show notes. You might even want to mention how you've applied the tip in your own life. The modern office dress code is a pretty nebulous thing nowadays. Most industries have been slowly moving away from strict business attire for decades now. The full suit and tie gave way to the business shirt before modern tech entrepreneurs popularize the image of a T shirt and jeans as the uniform of the workaholic disruptor. And that's all before we
started working from our couches. But Chris Oliver Taylor, the director of production for Netflix Australia and New Zealand, doesn't want to hang up his suit for good just yet. When he first left his job at the ABC, he bounded into an interview for a new position dressed in a T shirt and jeans. When he accepted the job, his new mentor told him that his first port of
call was to go out and get a suit. He's never been entirely short if she just wanted him to dress a bit sharper, but he found deeper meaning in that advice, nonetheless, to smarten up. My name is doctor Amantha Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral science Consultancy Inventium. And this is how I work, a show about how to help you you do your best work. On today is my Favorite Tip episode. We go back to an interview from the past and I
pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Chris Oliver Taylor, and Chris has received a lot of advice over his very illustrious career, and I was keen to know which pieces had stuck with him and served him. Well.
There's two bits. One's facetious and funny maybe but important. Other ones maybe more serious. So the first one was come from a wonderful former colleague of mine called Sandra Levy and Sandra used to the director of TV at the ABC and a esteemed media leader, wonderful, wonderful person who gained my break at the ABC when she didn't need to. And she offered me the job as head
of production, probably years before I was ready. And I came up to Sydney for Melbourne and I was in my jeans, T shirt and bound into the office ready for this meeting with Sandra. That sound was quite formidable and a very I didn't know her at all well, so thinking, oh, okay, fine, So I went in there and we had a commentment of the job. Do you want the job? Yes, I'd love the job. Good, go and buy yourself a suit. With her advice, and I think what that meant to mean, I took it kind
of heart, was smart enough. You know, be professional, this is this is this is important, and you've got to have an image to some degree that for you know, the chords with the organization you work for, or the role that you hold, or of course the image you want to project. And that even though she may not quite meant it in that way, I took that away. Let your advice around. Remember you're always on show, You're
always auditioning. You're always performing, you're always pitching, and so make sure that how you're projecting yourself matches who you are working with. And so I've always get that very front center. And the second one, which is really I think for producers to take heed of, you know people on this side of defense that I am. As I was leaving the ABC to join match Box, they were owned by NBC, and my NBC boss said to me, and his name is Michael, Michael Elston, another really amazing
leader who I learned so much from. Michael said, now, remember at the ABC, you can do nothing. You can send no emails, make no phone calls, never leave your office if you like, and the work will pile up outside your door. You will open your door and there'll be a thousand people wanting you to sign something and answer this and do that because you're in a broadcaster and work just happens once you leave that and you join the other side, where you have to generate everything.
If you do nothing, nothing happens. You have to generate everything, generate momentum, generate those phone calls, generate relationships, and generate a culture. And I've always kept that really front and center that if you do nothing outside of a most jobs, if you do nothing, nothing happens. You have to generate everything and make it happen. And so I've kept that really close to me as my career has continued on.
If you're looking for more tive to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up to that at howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.