Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with your hosts, me, Matt Best and Jonny Adams. In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights from our combined 30 plus years experience and hearing from other industry leaders to get their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in modern business. We'll cover all aspects of leadership, sales, account development and customer success, alongside other critical elements required to build an effective growth engine
for your business. This podcast is aimed at leaders from exec all the way down to line managers. Hello. Welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with myself, Matt Best and Jonny Adams.
Well, we're super lucky Matt, that we've got Damien Davies from ServiceNow. He has got a great career at ServiceNow, one of the largest organizations, over 26,000 individuals, and he's one of the first 100 employees there. Damien, knowing a little bit about you and your own personal life and the journey that you've been on, there's normally the way that the personal world of people's lives can cross over
with the career. And so how is your personal life you know, in the last number of years impacted your own growth in your career and so forth. Share a little bit about that, if that's okay.
Yeah, sure. Look, I've been quite comfortable telling my personal story for anyone that doesn't know. Literally, at the time I joined ServiceNow, so back in 2011 I actually made international news headlines just prior to joining service now because I was part of a small charity team that infamously climbed the wrong mountain as part of the three peaks challenge. Rewind slightly. I tragically lost a very close family friend. His name was Wayne Wilson. I lost
him to leukemia, and he was just 26 years old. And it was, it was, it was obviously tragic, very upsetting. So me and his brother, we formed the charity team set off to do the three peaks challenge. And you know, when we messed it up, we climbed a mountain called Stop ban instead of Ben Nevis. People say how I was on. Have I got news for you? The BBC satirical news show, it made headlines outside of the UK, and the extra publicity resulted in a lot of laughs and a lot of fundraising
for leukemia research. And Wayne's mum nominated me to carry the Olympic torch in the 2012 games as part of their heroes in the community, you know, campaign, and I was chosen, and I carried the Olympic torch, and I was proud enough to keep it, lucky enough to keep it it hangs on the Mall in my home office. So if you're on a zoom or a team school with me, you might see it in the background on my home office.
Fast forward a decade, and in 2020 I tragically lost my brother Kieran to suicide and a close family friend Greg also to suicide in the same year, and that gave me motivation to really promote well being and mental health and suicide
awareness. And then, of course, we went into lockdown. But as we started to come out of the various lockdowns, people at work said, Look, you're doing a great job on social media and internally at ServiceNow campaigning for mental health, people have talked about fundraising ideas, and someone said, why don't you go and redo the three peaks and do it properly this time? So in 2022, redid, the three peaks
challenge, smashed it the right one. Yeah, really strong team raised an incredible sum of money for mind, it was a colossal team effort, but we raised over 100,000 pounds for mind, you know, it's just opened doors and opportunities I then get invited along to come and do podcasts, to go and be an after dinner speaker, to tell my story and turning some of that tragedy
into triumph. And I actually read very recently that, like, grief doesn't just break us, it actually breaks us open, but what we use to fill the gaps is very much what can change the
outset of our lives. And I know I can wallow in pity or I can do something really positive about it, and I think that goes back to my mantra of making an impact, and why I'm very, you know, passionate, enthusiastic, and probably most of the time, very positive about making a difference and turning those very sad stories into positive outcomes.
Thank you for sharing that and your openness as well. Does it drive you, Damien, does it? Does it get you up in the morning that this, this feeling, and in that sense?
Yep, let's do this in a positive mindset. And mindset is everything. So, yeah, it absolutely drives me, very driven, very focused, very determined.
And as this sort of that formulation between, this is a people oriented podcast, also, it's the business sort of element as well. When you go through those lessons and those experiences in life, how have you taken the experiences with your your brother, Wayne, that the three peaks and let's not talk about the first attempt. Let's talk about the second attempt, because that's brilliant. How can you transition some of those experiences into into your
working world? Are there specific things that have helped you?
Absolutely, and again, look, every day in my job, it's about having that positive mindset, like, what's today's task? What's today's goal? You know, I've met with customers this week talking about some negative experiences, but like, say, I just look at it as feedbacks a gift, and I'm gonna go me. It's not personal. They want to turn something negative into a positive. They're all supporters and champions. They. Of the company, and I love the product, they
just had a negative experience. And my opportunity, in my role, was to listen to that, and I say, channel it into one of those buckets. Just approach it with a positive mindset. You know, it could have woken up that morning, had a really rubbish day, and taken it on the chin and taken it rather personally, but no, just take it objectively. So I'm turning some of those, you know, personal, you know, experiences into a work experience, and it, I say, just makes me very driven and very focused.
One thing that fascinates me about that Damien is I have a background in customer success and running Customer Success teams, building Customer Success organizations. And I think so often, especially with those new into that career, think of customer success and think of customer support and all of those different things that we that we do with our customers as we're working not against them, but not
necessarily seeing them side by side. And I think actually, what you've just shared there, and it's linked, for me, this links all the way right back to your sort of authenticity point earlier on in the discussion, having that authenticity around wanting to listen to the customer and wanting to understand their challenges so that you can help them is fundamentally why you know why we're doing this and how we can
be successful. If you're out there thinking, what do I need to do to be successful in a career, a customer facing career, be it sales, be it CS, account management, marketing, whatever that might be, actually, authentically listening and seeking to understand the challenge so that you can help someone. I mean, it's probably the foundation of of any of those roles and success in those roles. Would
100% and I think I'm lucky that I come from that you agree? support background. Not everyone in CS leadership does. It's not just authenticity actually gives me credibility because I've walked in their shoes, I've been on the Help Desk, I've had the headset, I've done the login and flogging who in some first line support hasn't done that at some point in their career, you know? But like, I'm able to listen with credibility because I can
empathize with some of the challenges. But what something I heard quite recently was, let's stop talking about products, solutions, technology, let's just talk about what is the business outcome. So it doesn't matter if the customer is in pharmaceutical in financial services, public sector, whatever the organization, whatever the role, there is a
business objective and a business outcome. How can we use our various products, solutions and technologies to drive that business outcome, so listen to what they're actually trying to achieve, and then figure out how we get there. So I think that's the foundation.
So I've got a bee in my bonnet about this, right? Okay, and it's a bit of a challenge, because as an organization, we truly believe in outcomes. My opinion of software sales as a whole, if we think about the professionals within that organization, I feel like there's still a gap of organizations being outcome focused in software. What I mean is, for example, as consultants, we have to be a holistic,
strategic focus, because some of our work is abstract. It's not a product, etc. Do you think as a whole, across all sort of software providers and and that area of the world, you know, huge, huge businesses right out there. Do you think sales teams and business and commercial teams are truly strategic and focused around those aspects, or are they just sort of siloed around just selling products, iconic convey about and transaction? And what's your view?
My view is, I think it's probably somewhere in
between. Think everybody has the desire to do that. Maybe they haven't matured or set themselves up to truly see that North Star, but certainly in ServiceNow, I see a huge want to do it, and it's all about working together as a team and, like say, listening to the customer, understanding what their problem is, and whether you're a solution consultant in pre sales, whether you're a client director or an account exec, whether you're in customer success, whether you're in
development, product management or engineering, everyone is working towards a common goal. And it might sound like it's so you know, too good to be true, but everyone is working with that goal in mind, and then it's up to the leadership team to make sure that they're not operating in silos, and that we bring everyone together to work towards that common goal.
How have you and the team at ServiceNow been able to to execute that practically? Because, again, a background in in software technology, and I think a lot of a lot of it comes down to agility. For me is that, you know, you pick up those startup organizations in there, and everyone's really, really clear on what it is that you're driving everyone can think in
that way. And then you get through those different phases, and maybe get to phase four to Phase Five of the journey, and some of that gets a bit lost in, or can get lost in some areas. I'm not saying it happens all of the time, but there's obviously that message from the top that says, This is what we're doing. But how does that distill down to individual leaders and to individual teams?
Well, think it's all about communication and transparency. Now, let's be quite clear, it's not always brilliant, right? I mean, I've been through some some internal restructuring and reorganizations myself over the last 12 months, and you know, everyone has a desire to do it brilliantly. HR, a great corporate comms team. Be great. Sometimes, when you have restructured and reorganizations, you know, you get the rumor mill people talk, and that rumor mill can sometimes move faster than the
corporate comms plan. So it's about leaders getting in front of that and how they address it and tackle it. Like say, we don't always get it right all the time, but then take that as a learning failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. I know it's such a cliche term, but it is just because we don't always get it right. If you have the will and the desire to get it right, let's take where it didn't go right as a learning opportunity and make it better next time. Is that fair?
I think so. And that maturity of the organization to do that, and I think it's sort of permission as well. And that goes back to that authenticity point again, which is, if you're setting out in your career, or you're looking for the next step, you don't have to be something different at work, bringing your authentic self and how you working out, how that then fits into the organization, and how you can leverage that. Otherwise it becomes very, very hard work.
Exactly, and look, 26 plus 1000 employees, right? 10 billion in revenue. These are figures that are publicly listed. We're still growing at 22% year on year. Growth, even at those staggering numbers, we've added nearly 10,000 people over the last five years. When you grow at that pace, not everything is going to go flawlessly. So we need to
work out where things went wrong. There are almost certainly individuals in the organization that have not had the best ride or the best career time, but we also get loads of accolades that are employee driven glass door and various recognition that doesn't come without a good culture and without the will and the embracement or the embracing of those employee engagement programs we spoke about earlier.
So that shows that when you get those employee surveys and those employee engagement scores that most people are getting it right, and then we can use those people that aren't as a learning opportunity.
But if we look at the business, a lot of organizations are talking about AI, and AI is all about the future, and people find it hard as humans, to look to the future. It can be sometimes creates anxiety or a little bit of concern, but ServiceNow have been on this great journey. What does 10 years look like from here about ServiceNow, I really want you to paint that picture for us. If you can do it.
Crikey, we'll be on the moon by then. As a kid, I was always a fan of science fiction. Tomorrow's World, watching that and watching like what does it look like in the future? What does ServiceNow look like in 10 years? I don't have a crystal ball, but I see it as again, you know, maybe a trillion dollar company, the stock price would be 4x, what it
is now, maybe we've got 100,000 employees, I don't know. But ultimately, I'd like to see ServiceNow in every single organization in the world, whether they're a small business, big business benefiting from that AI automation technology that frees humans up to better things.
Well, I think Damien, the reason why we love having guests like you on the podcast is all about simple, practical frameworks. We're all about giving back to the audience, and we're going to transition into a bit of that, where you're going to share a few ideas for the audience. We work with a lot of professional services and financial services individuals actually consultants themselves. And it's all about building the brand and building their own brand. And you've
really driven that. You've got over 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. I'm sure you get more inflows of requests than probably you going out in the market. But if you had to build a bit of a framework to help an individual build a brand on LinkedIn, what would be a couple of the points that you would share?
Yeah. Look, I really enjoy using LinkedIn as a platform, like other social media platforms, it had its flaws, but the benefits are the opportunities that it provides. I think I've been using it for over a decade. Started out by putting an online TV on, you know, and hoping that a recruiter might see it and get me better job opportunities. Then realizing that actually there's a social feed to it as
well. More consciously in the last two years, I took a very deliberate intention of increasing my personal brand. LinkedIn is a great platform for that, and I just read some tutorials. It's like, right engage with meaningful content, right to other people in the ServiceNow ecosystem, other business leaders like I mentioned, Stephen Bartlett,
right? You know, looking at his content, engaging with that by liking and commenting on his posts and other leadership posts, because then anyone in my network, it will come up in their feed the other and say, Oh, Damien Davies like this, or Damien Davies commented on this. So showing me, but it's also showing meaningful content. If they then like that and read it, they're like, ah, Damien, refer me to this content. So in the
back of their mind. That's one way. Of course, I'll post my own content, and, you know, I'll post updates on service now, clearly, on impact on our ecosystem. Quite often turn in human elements, because people love to see the human side of it, right? Like, if I'm traveling or I'm doing a podcast, I'll post about it on LinkedIn. People like, what's Damien up to today? You know, what a service now up to? And
it's that human element. It might be a happy hour in a bar, it might be in the gym, it might be in a podcast, it might be a conference or an event. People like to see what's going on in the world. So publishing stuff like that, as well as in between that, you know, championing mental health, talking about fundraising act. Activities, or just general tips and tricks on mental health and well being and being vulnerable and comfortable, sharing my personal story, giving that authentic
brand. Like I said, brand is about what people say about we can market ourselves, but brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And look at all these companies with great brands, Nike, coca, Cola, we can name drop all these companies that have got a great brand have invested heavily so that we talk about them when they're not marketing themselves. ServiceNow has been very intentional marketing
ourselves as the AI platform for business transformation. There you go, Chief Brand Officer, I name dropped that one in market is how we want to people to perceive us. Brand is how others see us and personal brand is no different. So if you're in your career, whatever level you're at maturity, you want to use LinkedIn as a framework. Yeah, start posting a couple of times a week. Don't do it every day, or certainly not two or three times a day, because you don't want it to be noise and lost.
But couple of meaningful things. Also. Think about what you're writing. Is it going to resonate with people that are reading it? Are they going to gain something from it? Either, Oh yeah, look, you know, Damien's at another conference, or he's on a plane again, or, Oh, actually, Damien was talking to customer X, and they discussed this topic, and that really resonated with me. Share that. Share content that you think is going to land and
inspire conversation. But like so it's not just about posting your own content. It's about how you engage with others as well. So it's a long winded answer to tips and tricks.
You know, just on that point of view. I think what's really interesting, it's more of a question, Has LinkedIn evolved too closely to Instagram? Is there too much personal posts, or do you think it's businessy enough? What's your viewpoint on that?
Well, if it's too personal and doesn't mean anything, I'll just scroll past it. You know, some people may choose to do personal, personal and that's great because, like, say, humanizes us, right? It's just a social media platform. Like, if we're meeting in an office, and we then go for a happy hour in the pub, and we're talking about personal stuff, like, social media is just the digital version of that, of what
we would do in our business lives anyway. Like, if I'm traveling to Sheffield, London, Miami, wherever I'm going, and I meet someone, and then we're gonna go and have a conversation. Oh, you know, if you've got a family, are you into sports? Sharing personal stuff is fine. If it's relevant. It's not Facebook, it's not Instagram, and it is how I view it, as the business social media platform, but sharing personal stories and personal wins, like, if you've achieved something,
why not share an achievement? Even if your family's achieved something, like, let's say my son plays drums, or, you know, my other son, you know, both of them do kickbox, and they just got their latest belt. If I want to share that with my business network, that's because I have a lot of friends in my business network who I want to share that story with. But I'm also thinking about, how am I going to share that story? Like on Facebook? It might just be, congrats boys. You know, you got
your blue belt on the work thing. It might be really proud of my boys. This is a result of grit and determination. You know, don't make it too fake. Make it authentic, but make it relevant.
I just wanted to add on the on that sort of, that branding piece. And I think what's really important there, Damien, as you said, is the reminding people. It's how they're perceived. How well do I know what that is? How well? How do you test that?
I don't know, ask people.
But do you... is that something that you would do?
I mean LinkedIn as metrics and stats, right? You can go to your profile and you can see, right, how are my posts performing. You can see what your your engagement score is in terms of people that actually like comment and react to it. And you can see your impression score. Marketers love that. Like, if you're in marketing and you get a million impressions, they're like, great. That's how many people have seen my content, but then how many people have liked and commented
and engaged with that? Now, stats wise, and I've done the analysis, LinkedIn says that 2% is good. So if you've got 2% engagement, that's good. And my personal content. You know, when I track it, somewhere between one and a half and three so it shows that it's engaging, it's meaningful. So that means, if 1000 people like it, 1000 people see it, and only 20 people comment on it, that's actually pretty good by LinkedIn standards. And that, you know, you can search that on what the
engagement score and what's good engagement. So that's one way people can track and measure if they feel that, you know, is it making a difference?
Yeah. And I guess the other way, as you said, is just ask people. It's like, you know, talk to clients like, what's your perception? Like? You might not ask your mates down the pub. You might get a different response.
Sometimes you don't need to ask. I've been at conferences and I've had people come up to me say, Oh, you don't know me, but I follow your posts on LinkedIn, and my wife just rolls her eyes and says, Oh, who the hell does he think he is? And I'm like, Who's that? No idea that is great. I mean, I get a warm feeling from that. Is there something wrong with that? I mean, is that too vain or too much personal pride? And someone comes and says, oh, oh, your story really resonated with me.
Or, you know, I've even had people say I was really struggling and I read your content on your brother, and actually, I'm in a better place now. That's life changing.
Yeah. I think that's a great place to end. Goes right back for me to that authenticity piece, Damien. I mean, I think this conversation is testament to how you live and breathe that and and driving impact and really kind of bringing in. Along those, as Jonny said, those practical tools and tips and things that people can take away from from this discussion. And on behalf Jonny and I've thoroughly enjoyed having you on thank you so much for coming down.
Thanks guys, thank you for having me.
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